Milky Way's vs Messier 87's supermassive black hole; read to know how they compare?

Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) recently me a ground-breaking revelation by releasing first-ever im of supermassive black hole at heart of milky way galaxy. This black hole named Sagittarius A* or Sgr A* is lurking about 27,000 light-years away from Earth and proves Albert Einstein's ory of General Relativity which predicted existence of se objects. tably, this is second time astromers have directly photographed a supermassive black hole, as first belonged to Messier 87 (M87) galaxy. Let us take a look at how different se two behemoths are from each or.

(Im: ESO)

But before we begin, it is important to understand what photo above depicts. Black holes as we kw m, have an intensely strong gravitation pull that warps time and does t allow light to escape. However, due to this strong gravitational pull, black holes gar all materials onto m and convert m into light. In im above, what you see is a glowing ring-like structure, produced by materials gared by black hole, surrounding a dark central region called show, which actually is black hole.

Messier 87's supermassive black hole

This giant black hole was first of its kind to be directly photographed in 2019. first major aspect where M87 black hole differs from Sgr A* is sheer size and of course, location. Residing in Messier 87 galaxy, supermassive black hole is 55 million light-years from Earth and has a mass 6.5 billion times that of Sun. In press conference where collaborators of EHT released im, astromers revealed that if Sgr A* is size of a donut, M87 would be bigger than a soccer stium.

(Im: ESO)

Milky Way's supermassive black hole

This newly photographed supermassive black hole resides 27,000 light-years away and weighs significantly less than M87, approximately four million times more massive than our Sun. It is worth ting, however, that since both objects have ermous gravitational strength, both black holes have a glowing ring around m. ESO released several pictures comparing two objects embedded at galactic center. im above shows M87 black hole staggeringly outsizing Sgr A* despite being over 61 lakh light-years away. 

In ar im, astromers compared size of black holes using Mercury's orbit along with that of pluto and sun's diameter. Despite all se differences, one thing that's common between se behemoths is that both were observed using Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), which is a collaboration of eight observatories that join forces to form an Earth-sized telescope.