But that wasn't the only problem. Vast, swirling clouds of dust and gas prevent visible light from the centre of our galaxy from reaching us, making what lies beyond hidden from view.
It's like putting a blanket over the thing you are trying to look at. It's putting a thick fog around that. So there is only certain wavelengths of light that can penetrate through that.
Without the means to see through that dust, the black hole that theory suggests it should reside at the centre of our Milky Way would remain nothing more than a bold but unproven idea.
With the quest to find the black hole seemingly blocked, there was nevertheless one glimmer of hope. Now at least astronomers had some sort of notion where one should be hiding. To tackle the problem, what would be needed was a new generation of telescopes and that would take a new generation of astronomers.
We were just at the point where we had the technology to address that question. And so in some sense it was I had the right hammer and I was looking for the right nail.
With her Los Angeles group, Andrea Ghez began work on a telescope that could see through to the hidden centre of our galaxy.
