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OUR black hole. Part II - Page 3

© Rodolfo Astrada

light observation. From their movements we can infer how large is the invisible mass to which they are tethered, and it weights in at about 2,600,000 times the Sun's mass. The Chandra X ray telescope on the other hand, afforded for the first time observation at high resolution of this energetic radiation able to penetrate the dust curtain, unveiling brilliant point sources and extremely hot gas in the Galactic Core.

Once in a while, some matter happens to dare too close, and gets trapped and swallowed. May be an unlucky star, a clump of dust or gas. Whatever falls prey, we hear briefly its agony wails in the radio, infrared and X ray bands.

How dangerous is to be sharing a galaxy with an almost 3 million suns heavy black hole? It sits at about 25,000 light years away, which said that way means next to nothing. Now, the snack ingested as Chandra recently reported, took place more or less when the first humans crossed the Bering Isthmus and begun to disperse in America, for it took that much for light to travel the span. Put it another way, if you could board a conventional jetliner and cruise at normal speed nonstop to the galaxy core, you should be living on airline fare for about 30,000 million years. If somebody can endure that. (The Universe is about 13,000 million years old, Earth about 4,500 million years old). This was to put into perspective how far we are located from it. Yet, in the end it is not distance alone what keeps us out of harm's way, but the fact that the Milky Way is a relatively mature galaxy with not much fuel left to feed an active quasar kind core.

Next Northern Hemisphere Summer, Southern Hemisphere Winter, when Sagittarius rises at dusk in the East, look at the sprout of the teapot asterism. Imagine a brief puff of steam rising, and inside the dusty darkness, at its end, there is A*.

Fasting for eons, feasting once in a while. Our black hole.

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