Scale Comparison
M87*'s estimated event horizon is about 1,550 times wider than Sagittarius A*'s.
M87* is thousands of times more massive than the Milky Way’s central black hole, so its event-horizon diameter is about 1,550 times larger in this dataset.
The Event Horizon Telescope images show lensed emission rings and central shadows, not the horizons themselves. The diameters plotted here are derived from mass estimates under the black-hole model.
Objects
Sagittarius A* is the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. Event Horizon Telescope observations imaged the glowing material around it, resolving a radio ring about 64 million kilometers across around a black hole of roughly 4.3 million solar masses.
M87* is the supermassive black hole at the center of Messier 87. The Event Horizon Telescope’s 2019 image resolved a bright emission ring around the black hole’s shadow; neither feature is the event horizon itself.
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About
Scale of Space is a scroll-based journey through the universe, placing objects on a single logarithmic scale so you can compare size across an unbroken range.
Guides explain selected parts of that range, while focused views filter the objects by subject.