There is something that bugs me about the image of Sagittarius A*: The hot gas should obscure the event horizon since we are observing it from the side. Why does it look like the image came from above the the disc of gas instead of from the side?
RiderFan said: There is something that bugs me about the image of Sagittarius A*: The hot gas should obscure the event horizon since we are observing it from the side. Why does it look like the image came from above the the disc of gas instead of from the side?
For starters, the famous white orange and red depiction of Sagittarius A* was produced via a radio telescope and can only be considered an approximiated visualization. The "black" in that image is not the event horizon, the same way that the material in the accretion disk is not really "white orange and red". The varying "density" of the image isn't meaningless, however, as it indicates the accretion disk has bias. The answer currently adopted is that the black hole is tilted compared to the orientation of the rest of the Milky Way.
Your first inclination might be to suggest that the notion is silly. Do consider, however, that our Moon doesn't orbit the Earth in the same plane by which the Earth orbits our Sun; nor does our Moon orbit the Earth in the plane of the Earth's equatorial spin; and, then, among other things, the radical solar orbit of Uranus in our star system has to be considered. The planets being representative of gas and dust that is attempting to avoid falling into the Sun, the material that "orbits" Sagittarius A* in its accretion disk falling into its event horizon should be permitted to adopt a tilted orbit as well.
I don't have an astrophysics degree. I'm barely allowed to adult unsupervised.
