Animation shows stars orbiting around the proposed location of a massive black hole at the centre of

This is pretty cool, it's a rather large animated gif so it will take a few seconds or longer to load up properly but you can clearly see something with a massive gravitational pull is acting on those stars.... The image is made up from observations taken from 1995 to 2008, 13 years, not that long at all given the scale that we are talking about here.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/0864450afef4.gif[/atsimg]

Pretty darned cool right?

Link (although TBH there is not much there).

Why does the black hole not eat them up ? Instead of letting them bounce back to there elipitical orbits?

Really interesting animation, there is definately some very large force acting on those objects.

One question I would like to pose:

- Object SO-45 flys directly past the 'blackhole', but is in no way effected by its gravity. Is this an object that is much farther away thus we are looking through the area where the 'blackhole' is sucking things in? or is it closer to us? I am just confused because, based on my limited knowledge, SO-45 should have been sucked into oblivion, yet it passes right by with no change in eliptical orbit.

Chew on that one.

Fry

With SO-45, who knows? What's the difference between a broken line and a solid one? Does broken mean it's below it? Above it? My observations:

Whatever it is seems to definitely have a gravitational pull to it. There appears to be several objects orbiting it, but a few are interesting.

SO-2 - definitely orbiting this object. Notice how it speeds up a lot as it gets closer and turns sharp and fast around it, then slows as it gets further away and turns back on it.

SO-20 - Also seems to be orbiting the object, but not as close as SO-2.
SO-37 - Orbiting at a fairly constant speed and distance.

SO-16 - This one is interesting. It moves faster as it gets closer and almost seems to run straight into it, but does a very tight turn around it and shoots back out the way it came. Notice that it's slowing down towards the end and about to make another run on it.

There are some maybe's and I'll use SO-16 as a base.

SO-5 - Quite far away, but you can see that it turns around and is headed back towards the object. It seems to be on a similar pattern that SO-16 is on.

SO-3 - Seems to be slowing and just starting to turn back on the object, but hard to tell. It does seem that way though.

SO-53 and SO-49 - Also far away like SO-5, but seems to be doing that slowing down and turning thing.

So, potentially eight objects orbiting this thing? I would think if it was a black hole, it would have sucked up something particularly SO-16 and SO-2. Whatever it is has a strong gravitational pull, though.

Originally posted by frey51
- Object SO-45 flys directly past the 'blackhole', but is in no way effected by its gravity. Is this an object that is much farther away thus we are looking through the area where the 'blackhole' is sucking things in? or is it closer to us? I am just confused because, based on my limited knowledge, SO-45 should have been sucked into oblivion, yet it passes right by with no change in eliptical orbit.

If I had to guess I would say that our point of view is edge on to the orbital plain, so for us it would look like it's travelling in a straight line... If we could watch it long enough it would appear to travel backwards and forwards on that straight line, when in reality it is in a stable orbit... Just we are seeing it edge on.

reply to post by Kratos1220


Perhaps ?

"A magnetar is a type of neutron star with an extremely powerful magnetic field, the decay of which powers the emission of copious amounts of high-energy electromagnetic radiation, particularly X-rays and gamma rays"


en.wikipedia.org...

very cool indeed, but dont they appear to be in a chaotic orbit? What does that mean? And if or when sucked in does it create Universes on the other side and does it make the hole bigger, hungrier?

Could there also be white holes near keeping them from just flying in?

it reminds me of the star map of 'The Hill Abduction Case'





www.abovetopsecret.com...

Very cool animation!

What will all the people that believe black holes are a myth use to explain this?

Originally posted by frey51
- Object SO-45 flys directly past the 'blackhole', but is in no way effected by its gravity. Is this an object that is much farther away thus we are looking through the area where the 'blackhole' is sucking things in? or is it closer to us? I am just confused because, based on my limited knowledge, SO-45 should have been sucked into oblivion, yet it passes right by with no change in eliptical orbit.

Don't forget this is a 2-D projection of 3-D space. If this was 2-D it would have been sucked in, but since it's 3D it could be billions of miles in front of or behind the black hole, when it appears to go right through it.

Originally posted by Arbitrageur
Very cool animation!

What will all the people that believe black holes are a myth use to explain this?

Why are you certain the area that those stars are orbiting contains a black hole? You are assuming that is the case.

All you can determine from the animation is that the stars are orbiting 'something'. There are many different theories for what that 'something' is.

I've seen a similar animation a few years ago. Not as clear and well defined as this one.
And of course not as many years were included.
Eventually we may get to see one get gobbled up.
It must be a very chaotic place in the crowded portions of our galaxy.
I wonder what the perception of time is like, as one of those stars makes the U-turn?
Or the star-field, from the POV of one of those in the center. It must be bright, and ever changing.

reply to post by spacedoubt


Yhea, it's very hard to imaging any planets forming around those stars with the most dramatic orbits - It must be a fantastic part of space...

I wonder how far away a sun sized star would have to be to have an earth like planet? - Stargazing from there would defiantly be interesting, but would life develop like it has here? Doubt there would be enough time between devastating impacts most likely... Talk about a shooting gallery. That is a serious amount of gravity and momentum we are looking at in that image.

Originally posted by zvezdar
Why are you certain the area that those stars are orbiting contains a black hole? You are assuming that is the case.

I'm only as confident as astronomers are, and while they're not 100% confident, they're confident:

Supermassive black hole hypothesis

Astronomers are confident that our own Milky Way galaxy has a supermassive black hole at its center, in a region called Sagittarius A*[8] because:

* The star S2 follows an elliptical orbit with a period of 15.2 years and a pericenter (closest distance) of 17 light hours from the center of the central object.[9]
* From the motion of star S2, we estimate the object's mass as 4.1 million solar masses.[10]
* We also know that the radius of the central object is significantly less than 17 light hours, because otherwise, S2 would either collide with it or be ripped apart by tidal forces. In fact, recent observations[11] indicate that the radius is no more than 6.25 light-hours, about the diameter of Uranus' orbit.
* The only known object which can pack 4.1 million solar masses into a volume that small is a black hole.

All you can determine from the animation is that the stars are orbiting 'something'. There are many different theories for what that 'something' is.

There are?

Have you got a link about those, and can they explain the facts I just cited? A black hole would seem to be the only thing that would agree with those observations but if you know of something else, please enlighten me.

I don't know what else it could be besides a black hole, but I'm open to reading credible sources.