Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Research Briefing
  • Published:

Revealing the 3D structure of a flare orbiting the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole

Based on physical modelling and using deep-learning tools, a 3D reconstruction of a flare orbiting the black hole Sagittarius A*, at the centre of the Milky Way, provides observational clues to the formation of high-energy flares and the dynamics of black-hole accretion disks.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: A 3D reconstruction of a flare from Sagittarius A*.

References

  1. Ripperda, B. et al. Black hole flares: ejection of accreted magnetic flux through 3D plasmoid-mediated reconnection. Astrophys. J. Lett. 924, L32 (2022). A review article that presents general relativistic simulations of eruption events around black holes.

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  2. GRAVITY Collaboration. Detection of orbital motions near the last stable circular orbit of the massive black hole SgrA*. Astron. Astrophys. 618, L10 (2018). This paper reports on near-infrared detections of orbiting bright features near the galactic centre.

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  3. Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration. First Sagittarius A* Event Horizon Telescope results. I. The shadow of the supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way. Astrophys. J. Lett. 930, L12 (2022). This paper presents the first image of the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*.

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  4. Wielgus, M. et al. Orbital motion near Sagittarius A*. Constraints from polarimetric ALMA observations. Astron. Astrophys. 665, L6 (2022). This paper presents an analysis of the polarimetric ALMA observations, made on 11 April 2017, of Sagittarius A*.

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  5. Levis, A., Srinivasan, P. P., Chael, A. A., Ng, R. & Bouman, K. L. Gravitationally lensed black hole emission tomography. Proc. IEEE/CVF Conf. Comput. Vis. Pattern Recognit. (CVPR) 19841–19850 (2022). This paper introduces our methodology for black-hole tomography on synthetic data from a very-long-baseline interferometer.

Download references

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

This is a summary of: Levis, A. et al. Orbital polarimetric tomography of a flare near the Sagittarius A* supermassive black hole. Nat. Astron. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-024-02238-3 (2024).

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Revealing the 3D structure of a flare orbiting the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole. Nat Astron 8, 689–690 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-024-02256-1

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-024-02256-1

Search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing