Great Galactic Voyage: Event Horizon Marathon

Having toured several beautiful sights in the Milky Way, we’re now going to our final destination… the very heart of our galaxy, Sagittarius A*, a supermassive black hole!

Okay, we saw that look on your face. Don’t worry, we’re not going to go into the black hole. We’re going to orbit just outside its event horizon, the “point of no return” from which no matter, not even light, can escape. It’s going to look awesome, and although it will take 24 Earth-hours for our probe to make it all the way around, it might feel like an infinite duration for us due to the black hole’s spacetime shenanigans. For a hint of what it might look like, here’s the supermassive black hole in neighboring galaxy Messier 87:

Starting at 8:00 AM EDT on 6/26, you will have 24 hours to complete one or more cells! Bonus & cell renaming information can be found in your in-game notifications.

Swag (generously sponsored by @susi): The top player (defined by number of points earned during the marathon time period) will win 1 pack of glow-in-the-dark stars and 1 patch! Also, among the top 25% of players, 2 players will be raffled the same prizes, and 3 more players will be raffled patches.

If you’d like to learn about what black holes do to light and spacetime, here’s an awesome video!

Artwork by Daniela Gamba
(Black hole concept art by NASA; M87* image courtesy of the Event Horizon Telescope, distributed under a CC BY 4.0 license)