A 10-billion-year, 50,000-light-year journey to a black hole

A star close to the supermassive black hole on the middle of the Milky Way galaxy originated outdoors the galaxy in response to a brand new research published in Proceedings of the Japan Academy, Sequence B. That is the primary time a star of extragalactic origin has been discovered within the neighborhood of the supermassive black hole.

Many stars are noticed close to the supermassive black hole often called Sagittarius A* on the middle of our galaxy. However the black hole’s intense gravity makes the encompassing atmosphere too harsh for stars to kind close to the black hole. All of the noticed stars will need to have shaped some place else and migrated towards the black hole. This raises the query, The place did the celebrities kind?

Analysis by a world crew led by Shogo Nishiyama at Miyagi College of Training signifies that a few of the stars could have come from farther away than beforehand thought, from utterly outdoors of the Milky Way. The crew used the Subaru Telescope over the course of eight years to look at the star S0-6 positioned solely 0.04 light-years away from Sagittarius A*.

They decided that S0-6 is about 10 billion years outdated and has a chemical composition just like stars present in small galaxies outdoors the Milky Way, such because the Small Magellanic Cloud and the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy.

The most definitely principle to elucidate the composition of S0-6 is that it was born in a now extinct small galaxy orbiting the Milky Way that was absorbed. That is the primary observational proof suggesting that a few of the stars within the neighborhood of Sagittaius A* shaped outdoors of the galaxy.

Over its 10 billion 12 months life, S0-6 will need to have traveled greater than 50,000 light-years from outdoors of the Milky Way to achieve the neighborhood of Sagittarius A*. Nearly actually S0-6 traveled rather more than 50,000 light-years, slowly spiraling right down to the middle quite than making a straight shot.

There are nonetheless many questions in response to Nishiyama, “Did S0-6 actually originate outdoors the Milky Way galaxy? Does it have any companions, or did it journey alone? With additional investigation, we hope to unravel the mysteries of stars close to the supermassive black hole.”