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S55 (star)

Star orbiting close to the supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way

Star orbiting close to the supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way

S55 (also known as S0–102) is a star that is located very close to the centre of the Milky Way, near the radio source Sagittarius A*, orbiting it with an orbital period of 12.8 years. This beat the record of 16 years previously set by S2. The star was identified by a University of California, Los Angeles team headed by Andrea M. Ghez. At its periapsis, its speed reaches 1.7% of the speed of light. At that point it is 246 astronomical units (34 light hours, 36.7 billion km) from the centre, while the black hole radius is only a small fraction of that size (the Schwarzschild radius is about ). It passed that point in 2022 and will be there again in 2034.

In 2019 the star S62 was believed to have surpassed S55 to become be the new record holder, but further scrutiny found this star was much further from the star than believed, and earlier observations were consistent with star S29 instead. In 2020, further observation discovered several stars in the Sagittarius A* cluster with shorter orbital periods than S55.

Its position in the sky has been monitored from 2000 to 2012 using the W. M. Keck telescope and from 2002 to 2016 with the VLT. One complete orbit has been observed. From Earth's current perspective, it travels in a clockwise direction. Having observed two stars orbiting through complete periods around the centre (S55 and S2), the gravitational potential of SgrA* could be established. Also general relativistic effects due to gravitational redshift should become observable.

References

References

  1. Stuart Wolpert. (4 October 2012). "UCLA astronomers discover star racing around black hole at center of our galaxy".
  2. Gillessen, S.. (February 2017). "An Update on Monitoring Stellar Orbits in the Galactic Center". The Astrophysical Journal.
  3. Næss, S.. (October 4, 2019}}{{dead link). "Galactic center S-star orbital parameters".
  4. The GRAVITY collaboration. (April 2019). "A geometric distance measurement to the Galactic center black hole with 0.3% uncertainty". Astronomy & Astrophysics.
  5. (2021-01-01). "Detection of faint stars near Sagittarius A* with GRAVITY". Astronomy & Astrophysics.
  6. (2020-08-01). "S62 and S4711: Indications of a Population of Faint Fast-moving Stars inside the S2 Orbit—S4711 on a 7.6 yr Orbit around Sgr A*". The Astrophysical Journal.
  7. (2015). "Precession of Fast S0 Stars in the Vicinity of Supermassive Black Hole in the Galactic Center". Physics Procedia.
  8. (2012). "The Shortest-Known-Period Star Orbiting Our Galaxy's Supermassive Black Hole". Science.
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sagittarius-(constellation) galactic-center
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