Milky Way's 'twin' discovered as astronomers find a supermassive black hole - 25th Mar 2011

Astronomers have found that the centre of the galaxy nearest to our own hosts a twin of Sagittarius A*, the bright radio source that lies at the core of our Milky Way and which harbors a massive black hole.

Scientists studied the spectacular spiral galaxy, NGC 253, with Chile's Very Large Telescope (VLT) and NASA's Hubble Space Telescope when they made the find.

Andrea Ghez, professor of physics and astronomy at UCLA, who studied the stars and planets, told the Daily Galaxy website that through combining these observations they learnt the black hole was born billions of years ago, perhaps as very massive stars collapsed at the end of their life cycles and joined together to create a single, supermassive object.

Astronomers have spent years speculating that a giant, mysterious force lay at the centre of the Milky Way 26,000 light years - or 158 trillion miles - away, but it wasn't until recently that they learnt what it was. Read More