This is the closest star to the black hole at the center of the Milky Way.
Scientists discovered a new record holder among stars that are very rapidly revolve around the black hole at the center of the Milky Way. This is a light that is closer to Sagittarius A* – the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, reports Science Alert.
According to the researchers, the star moves around the black hole at a speed of more than 2.5% of the speed of light.< /p>
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Although the center of the Milky Way is relatively quiet compared to other galaxies, the environment around Sagittarius A* stands out. A black hole is a monster whose mass is four million times greater than the mass of the Sun. Before astronomers confirmed its existence with direct imaging, they inferred its presence and calculated it based on a star locked in orbit around Sgr A*.
This star, S2, is just one of a group that which is called S-stars. They move in long elliptical orbits, one end of which is Sagittarius A*. In the course of the study, a group of scientists led by Florian Paisker from the University of Cologne in Germany studied these stars.
“The S2 behaves like a large person sitting in front of you in the cinema: it blocks your view of what is important. Therefore, the view of the center of our galaxy is often closed by S2. However, for brief moments, we can observe the surroundings of the central black hole,” Paisker explained.
The new star was named S4716. Scientists have calculated that at the point of closest approach to the black hole, the star is at a distance of 15 billion kilometers from it, which is about 100 times greater than the distance from the Earth to the Moon. When the luminary approaches the convergence with the black hole, its speed reaches 8000 kilometers per second.
It is not the nearest or fastest S-star in the center of the galaxy. That honor goes to the star S4714, also discovered by Paisker and his colleagues. It approaches Sgr A* at 1.9 billion kilometers, reaching a speed of up to 24 thousand kilometers per second.
But the orbital period of S4714 is 12 years, and S4716 makes a revolution in four years. This means that the newly discovered luminary has the shortest average orbital distance to the black hole of any known S-star.
“Finding a star in a stable orbit so close and quickly in close proximity to a supermassive black hole was completely unexpected and marks the limit of what can be observed with traditional telescopes,” Paisker said.
At this point, scientists cannot say how S4716 got so close to the black hole. Researchers note that luminaries cannot form so close to this object. So, somehow the star was thrown to Sagittarius A*. How it happened remains to be seen.
