{"id":27169,"date":"2024-12-17T11:00:29","date_gmt":"2024-12-17T16:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hobbyspace.com\/Blog\/?p=27169"},"modified":"2024-12-15T15:21:23","modified_gmt":"2024-12-15T20:21:23","slug":"eso-first-ever-binary-star-found-near-milky-ways-supermassive-black-hole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hobbyspace.com\/Blog\/?p=27169","title":{"rendered":"ESO: First ever binary star found near Milky Way’s supermassive black hole"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new report from the European Southern Observatory (ESO<\/a>):<\/p>\n

First ever binary star found near
\nour galaxy\u2019s supermassive black hole<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
This image indicates the location of the newly discovered binary star D9, which is orbiting Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy. It is the first star pair ever found near a supermassive black hole. The cut-out shows\u00a0 the binary system as detected by the SINFONI spectrograph on ESO\u2019s Very Large Telescope. While the two stars cannot be discerned separately in this image, the binary nature of D9 was revealed by the spectra captured by SINFONI over several years. These spectra showed that the light emitted by hydrogen gas around D9 oscillates periodically towards red and blue wavelengths as the two stars orbit each other.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

An international team of researchers has detected a binary star orbiting close to Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy. It is the first time a stellar pair has been found in the vicinity of a supermassive black hole. The discovery, based on data collected by the European Southern Observatory\u2019s Very Large Telescope (ESO\u2019s VLT), helps us understand how stars survive in environments with extreme gravity, and could pave the way for the detection of planets close to Sagittarius A*.<\/p>\n

\u201cBlack holes are not as destructive as we thought\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

says Florian Pei\u00dfker, a researcher at the University of Cologne, Germany, and lead author of the study published today in Nature Communications. Binary stars, pairs of stars orbiting each other, are very common in the Universe, but they had never before been found near a supermassive black hole, where the intense gravity can make stellar systems unstable.<\/p>\n