Alternate Names

Sagittarius A*

Type

Supermassive

Location

In the constellation Sagittarius

Finder Chart

Distance

27,000 light-years (8 kiloparsecs)

Mass

4.1 million times the mass of the Sun

Size

Diameter roughly 15 million miles (24 million km).

Discovery Methods

• Measuring the motions of stars

1

A look at the core of the Milky Way from the orbiting Chandra X-Ray Observatory. The black hole is near the center of the image, which shows hot stars and large clouds of hot gas. [NASA/CXC/MIT/F.K. Baganoff et.al.]

This document was last modified: October 24, 2005.