Mondo Knows Facts

A supermassive black hole sits at the centre of the Milky Way

Sagittarius A star contains four million times the mass of our Sun

Located about 26,000 light-years from Earth, Sagittarius A* is the supermassive black hole at the gravitational heart of the Milky Way. By tracking the high-speed orbits of nearby stars over decades, astronomers calculated that this compact central object packs four million solar masses into a tiny space.

Hubble views a supermassive black hole burping โ€” twice
NASA, ESA, and J. Comerford (University of Colorado-Boulder) ยท CC BY 4.0 ยท licence ยท source

Where this comes from

ESA

Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.

Go further

More facts like this

Tags: black hole, milky way, sagittarius a

A supermassive black hole sits at the centre of the Milky Way: the short answers

Where does this come from, and can I check it?
Sagittarius A star contains four million times the mass of our Sun. The figure is taken from ESA, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
Is this really a space fact?
Yes. It sits on the Space shelf, one of 1,090 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
What else can I read about it?
The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.