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Giant black hole enslaves star in Milky Way
Paris, Oct 17: A
Paris, Oct 17: A "super-massive" black hole lurking at the centre of our galaxy has snared a star, forcing it to perform a tortured orbital dance at speeds of up to 18 million km per hour.
A snapshot of the stellar slave has been taken by European astronomers, who say this is the first visual proof that a black hole of leviathan size lies at the heart of the Milky Way.
Astronomers have long suspected that most galaxies have at their core a vast black hole, one of the most powerful and enigmatic forces in the known Universe.
A few years ago, X-ray sensors detected potent bursts of radiation from a source about 26,000 light years from the earth that indicated our galaxy was no different.
But some experts remained unconvinced, arguing that other forces might be the cause.
The latest work, published in Thursday`s issue of the British journal Nature, takes the voyage of discovery a stage further and, the authors say, is damning evidence that a "super-massive" black hole is at work.
European astronomers led by Rainer Schoedel of the Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany, sifted through 10 years of imaging of a curious star, S2, that races around the location of the suspected black hole, which is called Sagittarius A.
Those pictures enabled the team to plot two-thirds of the star`s orbit. Then, in May this year, the team used a revolutionary imaging system at the world`s largest optical telescope in order to fine tune their calculations.
Bureau Report
Astronomers have long suspected that most galaxies have at their core a vast black hole, one of the most powerful and enigmatic forces in the known Universe.
A few years ago, X-ray sensors detected potent bursts of radiation from a source about 26,000 light years from the earth that indicated our galaxy was no different.
But some experts remained unconvinced, arguing that other forces might be the cause.
The latest work, published in Thursday`s issue of the British journal Nature, takes the voyage of discovery a stage further and, the authors say, is damning evidence that a "super-massive" black hole is at work.
European astronomers led by Rainer Schoedel of the Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany, sifted through 10 years of imaging of a curious star, S2, that races around the location of the suspected black hole, which is called Sagittarius A.
Those pictures enabled the team to plot two-thirds of the star`s orbit. Then, in May this year, the team used a revolutionary imaging system at the world`s largest optical telescope in order to fine tune their calculations.
Bureau Report