In the Dark

There is a paper on the arXiv written about 5 years ago called Towards the event horizon – the supermassive black hole in the Galactic Center by Falcke and Markoff, the abstract of which reads:

The center of our Galaxy hosts the best constrained supermassive black hole in the universe, Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*). Its mass and distance have been accurately determined from stellar orbits and proper motion studies, respectively, and its high-frequency radio, and highly variable near-infrared and X-ray emission originate from within a few Schwarzschild radii of the event horizon. The theory of general relativity (GR) predicts the appearance of a black hole shadow, which is a lensed image of the event horizon. This shadow can be resolved by very long baseline radio interferometry and test basic predictions of GR and alternatives thereof. In this paper we review our current understanding of the physical properties of Sgr A*, with a particular emphasis on the radio properties, the black hole shadow, and models for the emission and appearance of the source. We argue that the Galactic Center holds enormous potential for experimental tests of black hole accretion and theories of gravitation in their strong limits.

Please note that the black hole in the centre of the giant elliptical galaxy M87 is about 1000 times further away from us than the black hole in the centre of the Milky Way but is also about 1000 times more massive, so its Schwarzschild radius is 1000 times larger. The observational challenge of imaging the event horizon is therefore similar in the two cases.

You may find this useful if, by sheer coincidence, there is some big announcement tomorrow..