space goatsee in action!
heh, no seriously, that's pretty cool. I want to see what shape it is, go go more shorter wavelength telescopes!

nachobel

I'm curious what SgrA* is supposed to stand for. Reminds me of Sarah Jessica Parker's character in LA Story.

Anyway, I think the HeeChee get a bad rap. They are only trying to help us.

ps61318

To boldly go.....I think its wonderful that we can peek out at the unknown before we go there. This is the stuff that makes science so cool for non science people.

Curves

If you think about it, eventually we'll all end up visiting this place in a couple of billion years as cosmic dust.

Krrong

@ps61318: SanDeE* :-) A fave movie of mine.

Kit Eaton

@ps61318: SgrA* = Sagittarius A* Here is a pic from Chandra: [chandra.harvard.edu]

This stuff is way cool.

JChristopher

the scientists will not rest until they open a portal and bring back something like "The Mist", then we are all screwed!

hindsight2020

So that's what Switzerland is going to look like.

OMG! Ponies!

@lldsandsll: Accretion disk. If you don't know what it is, wikipedia it.

It's good reading fo' shizzle.

TendoMentis

if it's suckin up all the light, they got a pic how?

lldsandsll

Jupiter didn't ever do us any favors!

MastaFalse

Fluctuating Gravity Well? Space monsters? BUSTER MACHINES?! All of these we shall find at the center! Jupiter will be used to smack these monsters around!

MastaFalse

V.I.N.CENT... are you in there?

scarbrtj

@ps61318: I think it's Sagitarious A (resists the urge to wikipedia).

TendoMentis

a few years? how about a few months...hellooo LHC~~

mangamonster

Invisible
To telescopic eye
Infinity
The star that would not die

All who dare
To cross her course
Are swallowed by
A fearsome force

Through the void
To be destroyed
Or is there something more?
Atomized ---- at the core
Or through the astral door ----
To soar....

SigmundTheSeaMonster

@hindsight2020: "The Mist" doesn't come from interstellar portals opened by misguided scientists because all interstellar portals open onto Hell.

You've obviously never (a) played DOOM or (b) seen Event Horizon. While I recommend you play DOOM (often and for long stretches of time), I cannot stress the importance of you not seeing Event Horizon. It is a horrible movie and we will not speak of it again.

OMG! Ponies!

@JChristopher: @TendoMentis: Thank you, yes, that makes sense.

@Kit Eaton: Oh, absolutely. One of the few that my wife has stayed awake through MORE THAN ONCE!!! Bigger thumbs-up than that is not possible.

ps61318

@tabaks: Yes, ok, but let's toss in a dose of relativistic time dilatation effects. Because of all of the black holes out there what we see may have more or less relation to "real time."

ooooooooooooooooo

undereducated speculation on my part, but still....

ps61318

@OMG! Ponies!: I have saw Event Horizon and have seen Doom played. You have a valid point, we could already be living in hell and we don't even know it!

hindsight2020

I've noticed one very interesting fact. EVERYONE, and I MEAN EVERYONE, talks about these things in present tense. Which, if you spend a second thinking, is nonsense. For all intents and purposes in the real time world, we are ASTRONOMICALLY BLIND, worse than a bat. Why? because EVERYTHING we "see" is actually ancient history. Again, for all real time world intents and purposes, the whole rest of the universe (couple of thousands of light years away and onward) could have long disappeared in a spectacular cosmic explosion and we would know anything about it. Because all the light (stars, clouds, radiation) we see is tens of, millions of years old. And, thus, our "knowledge" of the universe is not current (can't be), it is ancient. whole civilizations could have emerged, developed, stagnated and died on any of the stars we see, and we still wouldn't know, because we don't know the last...say...million years of that star's and its planet's lives. Scary, if you ask me. We SEE the past ONLY, we live in a light speed-induced time traveling bubble. The only thing we can assume we know id this solar system. but, even then, the sun could have been gone for eight minutes before we know it. So, the evil Galactic empire could arrived with its ships, destroyed the sun and left in eight minutes and we would be oblivious about that and we'd die as such, too. SCARY!

tabaks

I'm pretty sure that if you zoom out far enough you'll see that this is just a close-up shot of the inside of my wallet.

92BuickLeSabre

@tabaks: You're kind of freakin' me out dude.

92BuickLeSabre

@tabaks: I think that most people realize this, but since, as you say, everything is in the past, we can just for the sake of convenience refer to in in the present tense.

I don't understand much (ie nothing) of the relativity class i took, but basically there was lots of "what is time?" shit and i decided to just go "everything is relative, nothing makes sense" and live with that. so we might as well say that what we see is what is real, so since there's no objective observation point from where we can go "okay Sirius B is exploding and it's sunday morning on earth" (except maybe a point equidistant from both events, but even then they'll only know waaay after it happens), who can say when "now" is? to summarize, a fish!

yeah, i have no idea. sorry.

Alfonzo

@tabaks:
You're thinking too linearly. That perception of time is helpful for our own day-to-day existence, but that experience is illusory.
[everythingforever.com]

scarbrtj

Oh, and get this one! As we're approaching the system, on our time warping star racer, we'd be treated to a sped-up timelapse show of the star aging rapidly before our eyes! And, it would either eventually "meet us in present" as we arrive or we'd see its spectacular disappearance which would, proportional to our remaiining distance to it, show us exactly, finally, how and when it disappeared, prompting us to break like hell and go back home in shame. 8^))

tabaks

I think black holes suck.

HeyBeav

@92BuickLeSabre:

Yup, sometime it really feels, if one tries to provoke an emotion in oneself, as sitting in a complete obliviousness, wrapped in a dark cloth of past. We, as beings, aren't built to easily perceive and get bothered by any of it. But, just think, any llight speed-fast galactic voyage to a 30000 light years distant star system (IF we EVER get such technology) out there would be a major gamble against the odds that the whole system we're trying to reach could have disappeared in a spectacular annihilation ten thousands years ago and there's nothing out there, waiting for the brave explorers. Chilling prospect. Any FIRST galactic joyride trip we'd take to a million years distant star, even on an instant-travel ship warp-time fabric-bending starcruiser ship would still be based on a...say...million years old star chart. Good luck! 8^))

tabaks

@tabaks: I need whatever brew of coffee you're drinking. Now.

Phenostar

@scarbrtj, Alfonzo, and tabaks: Seriously, this is why I only travel by TARDIS.

92BuickLeSabre

@92BuickLeSabre:

I'm just paying mine off. (Whew, it took some TIME, I tell ya!) Next week I'm folding back to Krummzrrwt, my home planet. 8^)))

tabaks

@Alfonzo: "everything is relative, nothing makes sense" and live with that.

Thats the same answer I give when men ask me to explain women. Congrats, you have reached a level of understanding of females that few men ever attain.

Curves

@tabaks: Present tense is used just for simplicity... it'd get pretty cluttered up with lots of "looking at object X but it's actually probably not there anymore" sentences. My astrophysics lectures were given in this style, as were my relativity ones.

Plus always remember: time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so.

Kit Eaton

Anyone read the Gregory Benford Galactic Center Series? I'm constantly reminded of it when I see stories like this, and how scary accurate the books are to real life so far. But I guess he is an astrophysicist so he might know what he's talking about...

Enochrewt

@tabaks: Thank you for that incredibly lengthy and unnecessary explanation. Believe it or not, we are familiar with the speed of light. Try it out on your 9th grade lab partner, she might not be.

@tabaks: "Yup, sometime it really feels, if one tries to provoke an emotion in oneself, as sitting in a complete obliviousness, wrapped in a dark cloth of past."

I didn't think it could get worse...

@Phenostar: "@tabaks: I need whatever brew of coffee you're drinking. Now."

I'm guessing it's a near overdose of Mountain Dew, with maybe some weed thrown in between homeroom and study hall.

GadgetPlay

Black holes are nothing new. Every single one of us came out of some singularity or other. The universe must find these little eddies of consciousness (i.e. us) rather amusing and pathetic.

Bullocks to you, g-damn smug universe!

mildretard

I don't want to see pictures or videos of the universe unless it happens in super-duper-slow-mo.

CapitalC

I photoshopped a black hole once.

Stacky Botrus

@tabaks:
What's even more weird than that, is the fact that we SEE into the future.
Yes, that's right.
The connection lag time between the pre-processing of the eye's retina and the processing in the frontal cortex is such, that we could not possibly see the NOW.

So our vision system in actually processes images from the future at a rate of 1/10 second. Or in other words, making very good educated guesses of what we will see.
Otherwise, our bodies could not react (think friend or foe / flight or die) unless an event has already happened.
Example: When you look and touch something, there is no lag time between what [when] you see it and when you feel it in your hand. Yet the optical processing is behind 1/10 second.

Of note, that's why magic tricks work.
You are expecting to see something, but then you don't.

aec007

Camera was so large, they couldn't find the focus knob? :D

Cross-eyedCyclops

@ps61318:

Sagittarius (the constellation) A (standard designator) "star", cuz it's special, pretty much.

@lldsandsll:

It doesn't suck up all the light. Inside the event horizon, nothing gets out, but this pic is of the stuff swarming just outside the event horizon (a few to a hundred horizon radii), which is actually quite bright. I find it kinda neat the the brightest things in the universe are right around the biggest black holes.

@tabaks:

Enh, Sgr A* is only ~30,000 lyrs away, so we are seeing light only 30,000 years old. Since the system was likely formed over > 10 billion years, we are getting a pretty good idea of what it looks like now-ish. It doesn't really keep us up at night.

PS: if you were wondering how hard very-long baseline interferometry is at millimeter/sub-millimeter wavelengths, let me assure you, friggin' hard. These guys are total tech-nerd badasses (esp. Shep Doeleman).

gStar

@tabaks: 9 minutes? nope... it depends on HOW the star dies, or gets destroyed.

shade-black

@GadgetPlay:

Oops, you forgot your daily dose of chill pills. Sorry, I didn't know or I would've adjusted the speech, especially the unnecessary parts to appease your heightened sense of self-righteousness. man, you super heroes are so finicky sometimes. 8^/

tabaks

Ahhh... shouldnt that hole be black?

You see it all the time, tourists taking photos of something behind a piece of glass and not turning of the flash. Oh well may be next time.

El_Guappo

I read an interesting book that peripherally addresses the milky way black hole and related mythologies called Mayan Cosmogenesis 2012. Some very interesting and entertaining research went into the book.

Schratboy

I don't understand how people know where the center of the galaxy is... Where's the beginning and where's the end?

RockNRollBeaver