A super-fast star that can orbit a black hole in record time has been found by astronomers. The star, designated S4716, is close to Sagittarius A black hole at the heart of our galaxy, the Milky Way. The star has the shortest orbital period of any star, taking just four years to round the black hole, which is 23.5 million kilometers across.
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| An Illustration shows a star rapidly orbiting a supermassive black hole. (Image credit: ESO, ESA/Hubble, M. Kornmesser) |
This indicates that the star is moving at an incredible rate of about 5,000 miles per second, or 18 million mph (29 million kph). S4716 travels quickly around Sagittarius A*, which has an estimated diameter of 14.6 million miles (23.5 million kilometers) and gets as close to the supermassive black hole as 9.2 billion miles (15 billion kilometers) during this time.
While this may appear to be quite far away, in cosmic terms, it is just 100 times farther than the distance between Earth and the sun. For instance, the sun travels 26,000 light-years to orbit Sgr A*, with a light-year equaling 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km).
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| Sagittarius A*, the Supermassive black hole of the Milkyway Galaxy (Imaged by Event Horizon Telescope in 2017, released in 2022) |
Researchers from Masaryk University and the University of Cologne made the S4716 discovery. The star required five telescopes combined into one huge telescope to enable even more precise and thorough observations. The Astrophysical Journal released the team's findings on Tuesday, July 5.
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