Astronomers at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) have succeeded in measuring the black hole mass from the motion of luminous gas that is seen swirling around Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the center of the Milky Way. It matches the measurement honoured with the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2020. Conclusion: the 4.3 million solar masses are contained within an orbit smaller than that of Venus around the Sun. Read the MPE press release here.
Image: © MPE; This image shows the motion of the flares on the sky from a combined fit of the astrometric flare data, taking into account constraints from the polarimetry data. The colours indicate the progression of the flare orbit over time. The background image is a simulated image of the black hole at the center of our Milky Way with the circle indicating the shadow size of the black hole.