M81

FAIL2 FAIL3 

Alternate Names

Sagittarius A*

Type

Supermassive

Location

In the constellation Sagittarius

Finder Chart

Distance

27,000 million 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

An ultraviolet view of M81 from Europe's orbiting XMM-Newton X-ray telescope. The bright dot in the center represents the hot accretion disk that encircles the central black hole. [Alice Breeveld, University College, London]

This document was last modified: October 24, 2005.