Watch Stars Orbit Milky Way’s Black Hole in Nearly 20-Year Time-Lapse

Watch Stars Orbit Milky Way’s Black Hole in Nearly 20-Year Time-Lapse

A quick one minute video.

So apparently this confirms relativity.

The NACO instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope was used to create this time-lapse video of stars orbiting the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole over the course of nearly 20 years

Well done to the cameraman that sat there for 20 years to film it...

HERE'S AN ARTICLE that goes into a lot more detail about what we see in the video, and relativity.

From the link.

For the first time ever, researchers have watched a star race past the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way, verifying that its motion showed the effects of general relativity, as predicted by Albert Einstein.
The stars of the Milky Way orbit a gargantuan black hole called Sagittarius A*, which is generally quiet as viewed from Earth, except for ripping apart the occasional object that ventures too close. The black hole's mass is 4 million times that of the sun, and it exhibits our galaxy's strongest gravitational field, making it — and a small group of stars orbiting it at high speed — a perfect proving ground for the extreme effects predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity.

This wont be news to some as its 3 years old. But what great video, 20 year timelapse...

a reply to: SecretKnowledge

Thank you much for sharing this..

This one star looks like it's being sucked apart by a blueish plasma that's light years big.👍🏻😊


Watch them pull apart.

a reply to: SecretKnowledge

Thanks for posting!

I do think I remember seeing this some time back.

Nice to see again.

Very cool

originally posted by: SecretKnowledge
A quick one minute video.

You had me expecting more... Its a 4 second clip looped for a minute...

It’s all going down the drain

a reply to: Bigburgh

Yeah i see it, isnt space great.

a reply to: ByteChanger

Sorry about that i should have mentioned that.

Too late to edit now

Cool space beans. Thanks for sharing.

The flashy bits in the center is matter entering the hole, I assume.

The interplay of the huge stars is amazing.

Lenses, visible light and time make for fun.

Now, just wait for the humanoid shaped light-years-big thing that comes climbing out of the hole in the next 10 years.

a reply to: SecretKnowledge

snip:

The black hole's mass is 4 million times that of the sun ...

4 million solar masses is a small Black Hole compared to other BH's of other Galaxy cores

our Milky Way BH, I guess , is lacking a conveyer-belt system of Planets or Stars to gobble up and become bigger as many other younger but further away Galaxies have

of course, a much larger mass BH in our Milky Way would have unknown effects on our Solar Systems well being, even at some 26 light-years distance from the core BH itself

Approx 26,000 light years away a reply to: St Udio

a reply to: SecretKnowledge

Awesome!!! Thanks for sharing. I just showed this to my son, he's 10 and already into the stars and outer space like I was, and it's amazing to see a star possibly 100s of times bigger than our "bounce" off the event horizon then start heading back for it's ultimate demise. Could you imagine 1 of those stars having a habitable planet with life on it. What would that feel like? Does time really slow down from there perspective? By the time they look up and see what's coming, as I would imagine the event horizon is visible that close, would 1000 years go by on earth? Reminds me of an old episode of stargate where a team goes to a planet around a blackhole and from our point of view watching them days go by and they look frozen. Then to slowly be spaghettified, unreal. I just told all that to my son and I can see his imagination running wild, he's already on youtube looking up blackhole videos. I love it

ETA, if you watch the star on the top right it gets slung out so hard and fast I would imagine and planet around it would be ripped apart. It easily got ejected at twice the speed it was being sucked in.

a reply to: 772STi

Thats great that your son is into astronomy.

Heres another thread of mine with a good video he will enjoy

EXPLODING METEOR

Wow, you can see the technology improve as the years pass.

How long before we can go check it out close-up, in person?