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Black holes are extraordinarily dense objects with gravity so strong that not even light can escape, making viewing them extremely challenging. It is putting out only a few hundred times the energy of the sun despite being much more massive. "If Sgr A* were a person, it would consume a single grain of rice every million years," Johnson said. Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics astrophysicist Michael Johnson called Sagittarius A* "ravenous but inefficient," currently eating relatively little matter. Sagittarius A* (pronounced Sagittarius "A" star) possesses 4 million times the mass of our sun and is located about 26,000 light-years - the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km) - from Earth. University of Arizona astronomer Feryal Özel, at a news conference in Washington, hailed the first direct image of the gentle giant in the center of our galaxy," showing a glowing ring of red, yellow and white surrounding a darker center.

The feat was accomplished by the same Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) international collaboration that in 2019 unveiled the first photo of a black hole - that one residing at the heart of a different galaxy.

The black hole - called Sagittarius A*, or Sgr A* - is the second one ever to be imaged.