Sagittarius A*

High school (ages 12+)
Space & Astronomy

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Date:

Step 1 · Read the article

Open the article and read it at the level above. Then answer the questions below in your own words.

https://smallwhale.org/articles/sagittarius-a

Write what each word means, using the article.

Do not copy the article. Write two things you learned, the way you would explain them to a friend.

Answers below are taken from the article’s stored facts, so they match what the student read.

1. What is the scientific name?Sagittarius A
2. What is the nature?Supermassive black hole
3. Why is Sagittarius A* called a black hole?Scientists saw stars like S2 orbiting it very quickly, which shows it must be a supermassive black hole. Its mass is about 4.3 million times the Sun's mass.
4. How do scientists know Sagittarius A* is at the center of the Milky Way?They measured the motion of many stars and found that all of them orbit around the same point in the galaxy's core. That point is Sagittarius A.

Supermassive Black Hole: A black hole with a mass ranging from hundreds of thousands to billions of solar masses, typically found at the center of galaxies.
Event Horizon Telescope (EHT): A global network of radio telescopes that work together to achieve very high resolution, enabling the imaging of black hole event horizons.
Accretion Disk: A rotating disk of gas and dust surrounding a central massive object, such as a black hole, formed by infalling material.
General Relativity: Albert Einstein's theory that describes gravity not as a force, but as a curvature of spacetime caused by mass and energy.