Plus, what’s killing the world’s biggest organism?
|  | Thursday, May 12, 2022 | | | | |
 | | EVENT HORIZON TELESCOPE COLLABORATION | |
The thing is packed with the heft of four million suns. It is in the heart of our galaxy, cloaked behind gas, dust, and stars. It has never been seen before. That is, until today.
As Nadia Drake reports, scientists using a global telescope network have unveiled the first-ever image of a black hole in our galaxy. Named Sagittarius A*, the darkened back hole is surrounded by a glowing silhouette—and it’s striking, not just to astronomers.
”You work on something, but it’s very abstract,” says the University of Amsterdam’s Sera Markoff, “and then suddenly it’s like—there it is. You’re looking at the black hole.”
See and read the full story here.
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 | PHOTOGRAPH BY TIMON PESKIN, ISTOCKPHOTO/GETTY IMAGES
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| Hippos in the weeds: Check out the giant Salvinia, also known as Kariba weed, that is atop this hippo-laden pond in Namibia. While Salvinia makes a pretty picture, especially with hippos, the invasive water plant reduces water flow and decreases light and oxygen level in the water. That hurts fish and partially submerged aquatic plants. If you’re here for the hippos, here’s our story on how they can do whatever they want.
Related: Hippo-human conflict is exploding
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 | | PHOTOGRAPH BY DIANE COOK AND LEN JENSHEL, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE | | | Nibbling at a behemoth: These quaking aspen trees are among 47,000 trees in a Utah grove with the same root structure. The grove, thousands of years old, is the heaviest single organism on the planet—but it’s threatened by mule deer and cattle, nibbling at the new sprouts that would usually replace the individual trees. And that could eventually kill the grove, ecologist Paul Rogers says. “Imagine walking into a town of 50,000 people where everybody in town was 85 years old,” Rogers tells Nat Geo. “That’s sort of the issue.” | | | |
 | | I want to be able to identify all the life in the ocean. That’s something I took away from sports. The goal was to be able to compete in the Olympics. I failed at that, but I got part of the way. Maybe I’ll get part of the way in this goal. | | | | Kakani Katija | Bioengineer, former competitive skater, Nat Geo Emerging Explorer
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| | What’s that, you ask? This pair of golden gobies peer from inside a glass bottle that they’ve made their home in waters off the Philippines. They look more like goblins than gobies with algae around them because the photograph was made with a long exposure. The nation has some of the best coral reefs in the world, many of them protected, but destructive fishing practices and climate change have threatened them, Nat Geo reports. | | | |
The National Geographic Society has funded Explorer David Doubilet since 2012. Doubilet and Jennifer Hayes document both the beauty and devastation in our oceans. They will describe their latest explorations of undersea wildlife—in Saturday’s PHOTOGRAPHY newsletter. Sign up for it here.
This newsletter was curated and edited by David Beard, Jen Tse, and Monica Williams. Do you have an idea or a link for future newsletters? Let us know at david.beard@natgeo.com. Thanks for reading! | |
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