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Recent findings from the first-ever image of the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) at the Milky Way's core suggest it does not consume matter as quickly as other galaxies' supermassive black holes.
Scientists also discovered that its accretion disk, the diffuse material orbiting the black hole, is not parallel to its galactic plane. As a consequence, the accretion disk appears "face on" from Earth's perspective.
The image of Sgr A* was published on May 12. Researchers used very-long-baseline interferometry to combine data from an array of radio telescopes from around the world, resulting in the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) that acts as an Earth-sized radio telescope. Collaboration started in 2009 with the goal of imaging Sgr A* and the black hole at the center of the galaxy Messier 87 (M87).
Future plans include studying the possible breakdown of general relativity in regions near black holes. Computer scientist Katie Bouman stated that the team hopes to eventually make videos of the black holes as they change over time, but that they currently lack the data to do so. However, the accuracy of the image has also been called into question by astronomers as the image of Sgr A* appears dissimilar to the image of M87's black hole released in April 2019. In particular, the "knots" appear in different locations in different images of the Milky Way's black hole.
Although Sgr A* is much closer to Earth than M87: 26 thousand light-years compared to 55 million light-years, processing the data took longer because Sgr A* being smaller than M87, and matter orbits Sgr A* more quickly. Sgr A* is estimated to be four million times the mass of the Sun, although the black hole at the center of M87 is estimated to contain 6.5 billion solar masses. Bouman stated the fact that Sgr A* changes "minute to minute" makes it difficult to create an image. EHT scientist Chi-Kwan Chan compared the process to taking "a clear picture of a puppy quickly chasing its tail."

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Wikinews:Story preparation/First image of supermassive black hole at Milky Way's center continues to reveal new information