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posted by martyb on Wednesday July 06 2022, @12:52PM   Printer-friendly
from the what's-the-hurry? dept.

8,000 kilometers per second: Star with the shortest orbital period around black hole discovered:

Researchers at the University of Cologne and Masaryk University in Brno (Czech Republic) have discovered the fastest known star, which travels around a black hole in record time. The star, S4716, orbits Sagittarius A*, the black hole in the center of our Milky Way, in four years and reaches a speed of around 8,000 kilometers per second. S4716 comes as close as 100 AU (astronomical unit) to the black hole—a small distance by astronomical standards. One AU corresponds to 149,597,870 kilometers. The study has been published in The Astrophysical Journal.

[...] By means of continuously refining methods of analysis, together with observations covering almost twenty years, the scientist now identified without a doubt a star that travels around the central supermassive black hole in just four years. A total of five telescopes observed the star, with four of these five being combined into one large telescope to allow even more accurate and detailed observations. "For a star to be in a stable orbit so close and fast in the vicinity of a supermassive black hole was completely unexpected and marks the limit that can be observed with traditional telescopes," said Peissker.

Journal Reference:
Florian Peißker, Andreas Eckart, Michal Zajaček, and Silke Britzen. Observation of S4716—a Star with a 4 yr Orbit around Sgr A* - IOPscience, [open access] The Astrophysical Journal (DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ac752f)


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by turgid on Wednesday July 06 2022, @02:28PM (2 children)

    by turgid (4318) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday July 06 2022, @02:28PM (#1258516) Journal

    Given that the speed of light is approximately 3e8 m/s and that star is going at 8e6 m/s, that means it's going at nearly 2.7% of the speed of light.

    • (Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Wednesday July 06 2022, @03:28PM (1 child)

      by PiMuNu (3823) on Wednesday July 06 2022, @03:28PM (#1258538)

      Relative to the rest frame of the solar system :)

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Thursday July 07 2022, @12:08AM

        by bzipitidoo (4388) Subscriber Badge on Thursday July 07 2022, @12:08AM (#1258587) Journal

        As it is orbital speed, it's relative to the entire universe.

        This star will surely be intensely studied. Wonder what it will reveal about relativety?

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by legont on Thursday July 07 2022, @02:56AM

    by legont (4179) on Thursday July 07 2022, @02:56AM (#1258612)

    Pluto is 39 AU from Sun.

    --
    "Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
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