If the center of the Milky Way is a supermassive black hole, why is the center of the Milky Way the brightest part of every photograph of it?

Question

Wouldn’t it be, you know, a big black spot?

In: Other

Answer 1

So a black hole can’t be seen visually. That’s why they’re black holes! The light can’t escape, the photons can’t hit your eyes so we can’t see it.

Supermassive in this context doesn’t mean large, it means literally it has a _lot_ of mass all compressed into one thing – a black hole. It’s gravity is so strong that the entire galaxy is orbiting around it.

So the brightness is from the stars that are orbiting the black hole.