🕳️ Black hole
Sagittarius A*
The giant black hole at the centre of our own galaxy.
- Mass
- 4.3 million times the mass of the Sun
- Distance
- 27,000 light-years away
Did you know?
- The first picture of its shadow was released in 2022, taken by a network of telescopes as wide as Earth.
- Stars near it race around it at thousands of km per second.
Find it in the sky
Photographed or visited by
Chandra X-ray Observatory
The telescope that shows what is hot and violent.
Different kinds of lightA picture taken in X-rays
More NASA photos of Sagittarius A*Straight from NASA’s image library, in the app
Explore more
All of deep space
The Sun
Our star, an ordinary one that keeps everything here alive.
Betelgeuse
A red supergiant in Orion that will one day explode.
Alpha Centauri
The closest star system to the Sun.
Eta Carinae
A pair of giant stars, one of them about 90 times heavier than the Sun.
Mira
A red giant star racing through space with a tail like a comet.
Zeta Ophiuchi
A runaway star, flung out when its partner exploded.