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

Flares from the accretion disk around the black hole at the center of the galaxy. [A. M. Ghez, et al/UCLA]

This document was last modified: January 12, 2006.