Zooming into the black hole at the centre of our galaxy

This zoom video sequence starts with a broad view of the Milky Way. We then dive into the dusty central region to take a much closer look. There, a swarm of stars orbit around an invisible object: a supermassive black hole, 4.3 million times that of the Sun. As we get closer to it, we see these stars, as observed by the NACO instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (the last observation being from 2019). As we zoom in further, we see stars even closer to the black hole, observed with the GRAVITY instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometry in mid-2021.

More information and download options: http://www.eso.org/public/videos/eso2119c/

Credit:
ESO/GRAVITY collaboration/L. Calçada, N. Risinger (skysurvey.org), DSS. Music: Johan Monel