January - First image of the Milky Way’s central black hole

This is the first image of Sgr A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy. It’s the first direct visual evidence of the presence of this black hole. It was captured by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), an array which linked together eight existing radio observatories across the planet to form a single “Earth-sized” virtual telescope. Two telescopes in which ESO is a partner, the Atacama Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX), are part of the EHT.