A star in a 15.2-year orbit around the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way

By R. Schödel, T. Ott, R. Genzel, R. Hofmann, M. Lehnert, A. Eckart, N. Mouawad, T. Alexander, M. Reid, R. Lenzen and 13 more. Nature, 2002

899 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Many galaxies are thought to have supermassive black holes at their centres—more than a million times the mass of the Sun. Measurements of stellar velocities and the discovery of variable X-ray emission have provided strong evidence in favour of such a black hole at the centre of the Milky Way, but have hitherto been unable to rule out conclusively the presence of alternative concentrations of mass. Here we report ten years of high-resolution astrometric imaging that allows us to trace two-thirds of the orbit of the star currently closest to the compact radio source (and massive black-hole candidate) Sagittarius A*. The observations, which include both pericentre and apocentre passages, show that the star is on a bound, highly elliptical keplerian orbit around Sgr A*, with an orbital period of 15.2 years and a pericentre distance of only 17 light hours. The orbit with the best fit to the observations requires a central point mass of (3.7 ± 1.5) × 106 solar masses (M[circdot]). The data no longer allow for a central mass composed of a dense cluster of dark stellar objects or a ball of massive, degenerate fermions.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Biomedical Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a5591bf406540c936aab1c146ac7c7cd5abc1808

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

In Biomedical Engineering

Citations in the corpus

Chandra X-Ray Spectroscopic Imaging of Sagittarius A* and the Central Parsec of the Galaxy (2001, background): “After decades of controversy, measurements of stellar dynamics have confidently established that the nucleus of the Milky Way harbors a supermassive black hole (SMBH) with a mass M 2:6 106 M (Genzel et al. 1997, 2000; Ghez et al. 1998, 2000; Schödel et al. 2002).”
An Update on Monitoring Stellar Orbits in the Galactic Center (2016, background): “The first orbit determination dates back to 2002 (Schödel et al. 2002; Ghez et al. 2003).”
Black Hole Spin Evolution (2003, background): “Most remarkably, proper-motion and radial velocity studies of stars near the putative black hole in Sgr A* (Schödel et al. 2002; Gezari et al. 2002) require that approximately 3 106 M be concentrated within a region 120 AU in radius.”
On the Nature of the Variable Infrared Emission from Sagittarius A* (2004, methodology): “The center of our Galaxy provides the best evidence to date for a massive black hole (e.g., Schödel et al. 2002; Ghez et al. 2003a), associated with the compact radio source, Sgr 1Department of Physics, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907; fyuan@physics.purdue.edu 2Astronomy Department,…”
Very high-energy gamma rays from the direction of Sagittarius A* (2004, background): “…& Falcke 2001) harbours a variety of potential sources of high-energy radiation including the supermassive black hole Sgr A∗ of 2.6 × 106 M (see e.g. Schödel et al. 2002), which has been identified as a faint source of X-rays (Baganoff et al. 2003) and infrared radiation (Genzel et al. 2003).”
The Galaxy and its stellar halo: insights on their formation from a hybrid cosmological approach (2008, methodology): “Studying the proper motion of Galactic Centre stars, Schödel et al. (2002) estimated a central point mass of (3.7 ± 1.5) × 106 M⊙, which is lower than the value obtained for our Milky Way 3 Following De Lucia et al. (2004), we assume that the material that is ejected outside the haloes as a…”
The Stellar Cusp around the Supermassive Black Hole in the Galactic Center (2003, methodology): “The orbital parameters for six of these stars indicate that their are bound to the central object with periods between 15 and a few hundred years (Schödel et al. 2002, 2003; Ghez et al. 2003).”
AN IMPROVED DISTANCE AND MASS ESTIMATE FOR SGR A* FROM A MULTISTAR ORBIT ANALYSIS (2016, background): “Once the star S0-2 went through closest approach in 2002, it was possible to fit its motion with a Keplerian orbit (Schödel et al. 2002; Ghez et al. 2003).”
TeV Gamma-Ray Observations of the Galactic Center (2004, background): “The central region of our galaxy is now thought to contain a super-massive black-hole of 2.6×106M⊙ (Ghez et al. 2002; Schödel et al. 2002) coincident with the unresolved radio source Sgr A* (Balick & Brown 1974).”
Phenomenological aspects of black holes beyond general relativity (2018, background): “For the purposes of estimating the order of magnitude of this quantity, it is enough to consider the star S2 (also known as S0-2) [100, 101] which is one of the most precisely tracked.”
The First Measurement of Spectral Lines in a Short-Period Star Bound to the Galaxy’s Central Black Hole: A Paradox of Youth (2003, background): “…(Eckart & Genzel 1996; Ghez et al. 1998), projected accelerations (Ghez et al. 2000; Eckart et al. 2002), and three-dimensional orbital motions (Schödel et al. 2002; Ghez et al. 2003), which each provided a successively stronger case for a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky…”
The Proper Motion of Sagittarius A*. II. The Mass of Sagittarius A* (2004, background): “…by two arguments: (1) the very close correspondence (better than 10 mas or 80 AU in projection) between the focal positions of the stellar orbits (Schödel et al. 2002, 2003; Ghez et al. 2003) and the infrared position of Sgr A* (Menten et al. 1997; Reid et al. 2003), and (2) the very short…”
First light for GRAVITY: Phase referencing optical interferometry for the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (2017, background): “It orbits Sgr A* with a period of 16 years (Schödel et al. 2002; Ghez et al. 2008; Gillessen et al. 2017) and reaches a velocity of up to 7600 km s − 1 , that is, 2.5% the speed of light, which makes it a prime candidate to study general relativistic orbit e ﬀ ects close to a supermassive black…”
Nonthermal Electrons in Radiatively Inefficient Accretion Flow Models of Sagittarius A* (2003, background): “There is compelling evidence that the center of our Galaxy hosts a massive black hole (BH) with mass M = 2.6×106M (e.g., Schödel et al. 2002; Ghez et al. 2003).”
Variable Infrared Emission from the Supermassive Black Hole at the Center of the Milky Way (2003, background): “At the center of the Milky Way lurks a supermassive black hole (SMBH), whose presence and mass, ∼4×106M⊙, has been ferreted out through its strong gravitational field (e.g., Ghez et al. 2003a,b; Schödel et al. 2002, 2003), but whose associated radiative emission has remained more elusive.”
On the charge of the Galactic centre black hole (2018, background): “…for the density of the dark mass comes from the monitoring of Btype star S2 with the pericentre distance of rP ' 5.8 × 10−4 pc (Parsa et al. 2017; Schödel et al. 2002; Gillessen et al. 2009, 2017; Gravity Collaboration et al. 2018) ρS2 = 5.2×1015 ( M• 4.3× 106 M )( rP 5.8× 10−4 pc )−3 M pc…”