Scientists can estimate the mass of the giant black hole at the heart of our galaxy using the deepest and most precise images of the center of the Milky Way.
A previously unknown star was discovered by using the Very Large Telescope Interferometer at the European Southern Observatory.
The Very Large Telescope is one of the most advanced telescopes in the world. The observatory has four main telescopes, each 27 feet in diameter, and four auxiliary telescopes, each 6 feet in diameter.
Astronomers use interferometry to combine the light from the four main telescopes into a single image. The latest iteration of interferometry provides a 20-fold improvement in sharpness and detail compared to the images obtained by individual telescopes, according to researchers.
There are colorful threads in the new panorama.
The VLTI gives us this incredible spatial resolution and with the new images we reach deeper than ever before, said Julia Stadler, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, Germany. We are amazed by their amount of detail and the number of stars they reveal around the black hole.
The black hole in the center of the Milky Way emits no light. The motions of the stars in its vicinity can be studied by the astronomer.
The director of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics said that following stars around Sagittarius A* allows them to probe the gravity of the black hole and to determine its properties. The new study was co-authored by Genzel.
3 of 3 are images
The image is from the ESO.
The stars are in the center of the Milky Way. The image is from the ESO.
A wide field of view of the center of the universe. The image is from the ESO.
Sagittarius A* has a mass of 4.3 million suns and sits at a distance of 27,000 light-years from Earth. The estimates of these figures are the most precise to date.
The closest known star to Sagittarius A*, S29, was observed by the astronomer at a distance of just 8 billion miles. The distance from Earth to the sun is about 90 times larger. The star traveled at a record-breaking speed during this close pass.
A new star was discovered in this dense region. The star's discovery is a promising development for further research.
GRAVITY is an international project that is developing new techniques for analyzing images of the Milky Way's galactic center with the goal of mapping the surroundings of Sagittarius A* in the greatest possible detail. In the future, the astronomer hope to be able to detect stars much fainter than S29 and S300, and even closer to the black hole. The black hole's rotation may be revealed by the stars' orbits. The world's largest optical space observatory will come online in about 25 years after the completion of the Extremely Large Telescope.
Frank Eisenhauer, an astronomer at MPE and principal investigator of the GRAVITY project, said in the statement that they will be able to find out how fast the black hole spins. "No one has been able to do that so far."
The new research is described in two papers.
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