Deep in the Core

meehawl writes "A video of what is currently thought to be the closest star to the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy. The star orbits the black hole in a highly elliptical orbit with a period of 15 years or so, but at its closest approach it swings within 17 light hours of the black hole (around three times the distance between the Sun and Pluto). In the video, you can see the star ricochet past its closest approach to the black hole. This slingshot effect enabled astronomers to further pinpoint the mass of the black hole, which is confidently estimated at 2 million suns or so. The mass observation, coupled with the size constraints observed, indicates the object at the centre of the galaxy is definitely composed of some exotically dense form of matter."

Comments

3 year old news, 3 year old video

[Darth Cow]

Take a look at the original press release, dated 16 October 2002.

The article was published in Nature at the same time, and the video isn't new either.

Remind me why this is going up on Slashdot today?

Re:Watch a little more closely ...

[wkitchen]

So if a star (and just think how much mass is in a star compared to you) orbits something in 15 years, you don't think it's just a bit interesting that it covers about half of its entire orbit in one fifteenth of the total time?

Good point. Also consider that Pluto orbits the sun once every 248 years. This star's nearest approach to the object is about 3 times the distance from pluto to the sun, and since it has an extremely eliptical orbit, it spends most of its time much further away than even that. For it to orbit in 15 years, and to cover the near half of that orbit in only about 1 year, means that the thing it's orbiting is incredibly massive. Even if it isn't a black hole, and even if the fundamental ideas about black holes turned out to be very wrong, you can still bet that, whatever it is, it is something that is similarly strange and interesting.