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New Proof of Galactic Black Hole
Milky Way Spins Around Object that Dwarfs the Sun
 Listen to David Kestenbaum's report.
A super-massive black hole is thought to be hidden inside this bright source at the center of the Milky Way galaxy.
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Image: Farhad Yusef-Zadeh et al. (Northwestern), VLA, NRAO
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A side view of our galaxy. The Milky Way is shaped like a flying saucer, with a bulge in the middle of a flat disc.
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Image: E. L. Wright (UCLA), The COBE Project, DIRBE, NASA
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Oct. 16, 2002 -- A team of astronomers is reporting new evidence that a super-massive black hole lives at the center of the Earth's galaxy, the Milky Way.
For a decade, the researchers have been watching a handful of stars at the galaxy's center -- waiting for one to swerve. This week, they report in the journal Nature that they've found a star whose telltale orbit can only be explained by the pull of a black hole.
The astrophysicists used the Very Large Telescope, which stands atop a mountain in northern Chile. With it, scientists can see into the crowded center of the Milky Way. Scientists have known that there is a very heavy object there, something weighing 3.5 million times as much as the sun.
But in order to prove it was a black hole, the team from Germany's Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics had to show that all of that material is packed into a very small space. One way to do this is by watching stars around it. For All Things Considered, NPR's David Kestenbaum reports on their findings.
In Depth
 Browse the NPR archives for more stories about black holes.
Resources
• The Very Large Telescope Project.
• Nature online.
• Black hole pictures, games and more at NASA's Spacelink Web site.
• NASA's Imagine the Universe Web site.
• Hubble Space Telescope Science Institute on black holes.
• Take a virtual trip to a black hole.
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