Washington: A newly discovered star takes only four years to make one complete orbit around the black hole at the center of our galaxy, according to a new study. There is a dense cluster of stars in the vicinity of the black hole at the center of our galaxy. This cluster, called the S cluster, is home to over a hundred stars that differ in their brightness and mass. S stars move especially fast.
“One key member, S2, behaves like an older person sitting in front of you in a movie theater: it blocks your view of what’s important,” said Dr. Florian Pesker, lead author of the new study.
‘The view at the center of our galaxy is therefore often obscured by S2. However, within moments we can observe the surroundings of the central black hole.
Through continuously sophisticated methods of analysis, coupled with nearly twenty years of observations, the scientist has now without a doubt identified a star that revolves around a central supermassive black hole in just four years. A total of five telescopes observed the star, four of these five were combined into a larger telescope to make even more precise and detailed observations.
“For a star to be in a stable orbit so close and fast around a supermassive black hole was completely unexpected and marks the limit to what can be observed with conventional telescopes,” Pesker said.
In addition, the discovery sheds new light on the origin and evolution of the orbits of rapidly moving stars at the center of the Milky Way.
“S4716’s short-period, compact orbit is quite perplexing,” said Michael Zajecek, an astrophysicist at Masaryk University in Brno who was involved in the study.
Stars cannot form so easily near a black hole. S4716 had to move inward, for example by approaching other stars and objects in the S cluster, causing its orbit to shrink significantly.
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