” One prominent member, S2, acts like a big individual being in front of you in a movie theater: it obstructs your view of whats essential,” said Dr. Florian Peissker, lead author of the new study. “The view into the center of our galaxy is for that reason typically obscured by S2. Nevertheless, in brief moments we can observe the surroundings of the central great void.”
Stars in the S cluster orbit the black hole at the center of our galaxy at fantastic speed. S4716 is the fastest. Credit: Florian Peissker, University of Cologne
By means of constantly improving techniques of analysis, together with observations spanning almost twenty years, the astronomers have now recognized without a doubt a star that circumnavigates the main supermassive great void in simply 4 years. In overall, 5 telescopes observed the star, with 4 of these 5 being integrated into one large telescope to permit a lot more precise and detailed observations.
” For a star to be in a stable orbit so close and quick in the vicinity of a supermassive great void was entirely unexpected and marks the limitation that can be observed with standard telescopes,” said Peissker.
This image is high-pass filtered and shows the position of numerous S stars close to Sgr A *, which is indicated by a black cross. The star in the white rushed circle shows a K-band magnitude of 16.3 mag, while the star in the blue circle is 17.0 mag faint. Both K-band magnitudes are consistent with the reported values for S62 by Peißker et al. (2020a) and those for S29 by Gillessen et al. (2017) and Peißker et al. (2021b).
Additionally, the discovery sheds brand-new light on the origin and evolution of the orbit of fast-moving stars in the heart of the Milky Way. “The short-period, compact orbit of S4716 is quite perplexing,” Michael Zajacek, an astrophysicist at Masaryk University in Brno who was associated with the research study, said. “Stars can not form so easily near the great void. S4716 needed to move inwards, for example by approaching other stars and objects in the S cluster, which caused its orbit to shrink considerably,” he included.
Reference: “Observation of S4716– a Star with a 4 yr Orbit around Sgr A *” by Florian Peißker, Andreas Eckart, Michal Zajacek and Silke Britzen, 5 July 2022, The Astrophysical Journal.DOI: 10.3847/ 1538-4357/ ac752f.
Artists illustration of a black hole. A star was discovered zipping around the great void at the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way, at an astonishing speed of 8,000 km/s.
A recently found star only takes 4 years to circumnavigate the black hole at the center of our Milky Way.
Astronomers have discovered the fastest recognized star, which travels around a great void in record time. The star, S4716, orbits Sagittarius A *, the black hole in the center of our galaxy, in 4 years and reaches a speed of around 8,000 kilometers per 2nd (5,000 miles per second) which is about 30 million kilometers per hour (18 million miles per hour).
S4716 comes as close as 100 AU (huge system) to the great void– a little distance by huge standards. One AU is the approximate mean distance from the Earth to the Sun and represents 149,597,871 kilometers (92,955,807 miles). The research study was conducted by researchers at the University of Cologne and Masaryk University in Brno (Czech Republic) and published on July 5, 2022, in The Astrophysical Journal.
In the area near the black hole at the center of our galaxy is a densely jam-packed cluster of stars. This cluster, called the S cluster, is house to well over a hundred stars that differ in their brightness and mass. S stars move especially quickly.
In the area near the black hole at the center of our galaxy is a largely packed cluster of stars. S stars move particularly quick.
The star in the white dashed circle shows a K-band magnitude of 16.3 mag, while the star in the blue circle is 17.0 mag faint. The discovery sheds new light on the origin and evolution of the orbit of fast-moving stars in the heart of the Milky Way. S4716 had to move inwards, for example by approaching other stars and objects in the S cluster, which triggered its orbit to diminish considerably,” he included.
