Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Stars circling the supermassive black hole in the center of our galaxy

Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE)

"An international team of astronomers, lead by researchers at the Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE), has directly observed an otherwise normal star orbiting the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy."


















Stars around a Black Hole in the Milky Way

"Andrea Ghez et al of the UCLA Astronomy Department's Galactic Center Group published a paper in Nature in 2000 where they observe orbits of a dozen individual stars near the center of our galaxy. They used these observations to predict the position of a supermassive black hole there. This movie shows these observations, with their extrapolated orbits. The side of the initial box is about 0.8 parsecs (15 trillion miles), while the cross in the center is the position of the black hole."


















Stars around a Black Hole in the Milky Way - As seen from the Black Hole

"Andrea Ghez et al of the UCLA Astronomy Department's Galactic Center Group published a paper in Nature in 2000 where they observe orbits of a dozen individual stars near the center of our galaxy. They used these observations to predict the position of a supermassive black hole there. This movie shows the motion of these stars as seen from the Black Hole."


















Stars around a Black Hole in the Milky Way

"Andrea Ghez et al of the UCLA Astronomy Department's Galactic Center Group published a paper in Nature in 2000 where they observe orbits of a dozen individual stars near the center of our galaxy. They used these observations to predict the position of a supermassive black hole there. This movie shows these observations, with their extrapolated orbits. The side of the initial box is about 0.8 parsecs (15 trillion miles), while the cross in the center is the position of the black hole."


















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