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Around the black hole in the center of the Milky Way, a rosette-shaped ‘dancing’ star, astronomers discovered with the Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory (ESO). This movement had never been observed near a star, but after 27 years of observations, it has now been seen with certainty in the center of the Milky Way.
By ‘circle’ that the star, called S2, orbits the Sagittarius black hole A *, the star’s orbit shifts slightly. This makes the ‘waltz’ that S2 makes around the black hole look like a rosette.
Albert Einstein predicted this way of moving about a hundred years ago, but evidence was only found once before. It was previously concluded that Mercury also moves around our sun in such a way.
Movement has now been observed on a star for the first time. During its dance, S2 takes an orbit for about sixteen years, passing the black hole less than 20 billion km. This is 120 times the distance between the Sun and Earth.
At its closest point to the black hole, the star passes at about 9,000 kilometers per second, or about 3 percent of the speed of light.
The Milky Way as it would look if people could perceive radio waves with the naked eye. The white spot in the center is where the Sagitarrius A * black hole is located. (Photo: Dr. Natasha Hurley-Walker (ICRAR / Curtin) and the GLEAM team)
