Earth is a little closer to the supermassive black hole in the center of the galaxy than we think.
NAOJ
Is at the center of our galaxy A supermassive black hole named Sagittarius A *. It is about 4 million times larger than our Sun.
Great news! It turns out that scientists have discovered that Sagittarius is closer to 2000 light-years than we thought.
This does not mean that we are currently on a collision course with a black hole. No, that’s just the result of a more accurate model of the galaxy based on new data.
For the past 15 years, a Japanese radio astronomy project, VERA, has been collecting data. Using a technique called interferometry, VERA collected data from telescopes across Japan and combined them with data from other existing projects to create what is the most accurate map of the galaxy.
By pointing out the location and velocity of about 99 specific points in our galaxy, the VRA concludes that the supermassive black hole Sagittarius at the center of our galaxy is actually 25,800 light-years from Earth – closer to about 2,000 light-years. Which we previously believed.
In addition, the new model calculates the Earth is moving faster than we think. The older models traveled the Earth at a speed of 220 kilometers (136 miles) per second, orbiting the center of the galaxy. In Veera’s new model Dell we have a speed of 227 kilometers (141 miles) per second.
Not bad!
Vera now hopes to increase the accuracy of its model by expanding its EAVN (East Asian VLBI network) and increasing the amount of data collection points it collects from large radio telescopes in Japan, Korea and China.
