Telescope spots mysterious threads in the burning heart of our own Milky Way galaxy

An image captured by a new radio telescope shows the dark heart of our own Milky Way galaxy – and the mysterious ‘filaments’ around its central supermassive black hole.

The image captured by the MeerKAT telescope in South Africa shows the region around the supermassive black hole, which is at least four million times the mass of our sun.

The image captures the mysterious magnetised filaments around the black hole – whose origin remains a mystery after they were first spotted in the Eighties.

Fernando Camilo, chief scientist of the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO) said, ‘The centre of the galaxy was an obvious target: unique, visually striking and full of unexplained phenomena – but also notoriously hard to image using radio telescope.

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The centre of the Milky Way, 25,000 light-years away from Earth and lying behind the constellation Sagittarius, is enshrouded by intervening clouds of gas and dust.

This makes it invisible from Earth using ordinary telescopes.

Scientists believe the new image may hold the key to understanding the strange ‘filaments’.

Farhad Yusef-Zadeh of Northwestern University said, ‘It shows so many features never before seen, including compact sources associated with some of the filaments, that it could provide the key to cracking the code and solve this three-decade riddle.’