Observing Sgr A*

During the week of July 22nd and again in early August, NuSTAR observed the supermassive black hole that resides at the center ofour own Milky Way Galaxy as part of an large, multi-wavelength, international campaign. This supermassive black hole, our closest example, is known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) and weighs approximately 4 million times as much as our Sun. NuSTAR obtained high-energy X-ray data on Sgr A*, complementing coordinated infrared images obtained with the Keck telescopes (pictured here, as seen from Subaru Telescope; the lasers visible in these images allowed the Keck observers to correct for atmospheric blurring using a technique called "adaptive optics"), low-energy X-ray data obtained with the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and very high-energy gamma-ray data obtained with the High-Energy Stereoscopic System (HESS).

Image credit:  Daniel Birchall, Subaru Telescope.