Simulation of the orbits of stars around the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way

This simulation shows the orbits of a tight group of stars close to the supermassive blackhole at the heart of the Milky Way. During 2018 one of these stars, S2, passed very close to the black hole and was the subject of intense scrutiny with ESO telescope. Its behaviour matched the predictions of Einsteins's general relativity and was inconsistent with simpler Newtonian gravity.

Credit:

[kitsouk]

The Best simulation of the orbits of the stars near Sgr A* yet! A very busy neighbourhood.

[corazoncubano]

Its mind blowing thinking about what is going on at our galactic center. Amazing how an object like Sgr A* can exert such tremendous influence on objects and matter billions of miles away. Just mind blowing.

[MrEnjoivolcom]

Finally a good version and not just that 4 balls of light showing one some star be whipped around. This shows so much more!

[KevinS]

WOW ESO is using Space Engine ??! Thats amazing!! It's great, seriously.

[konoeyoshito]

the perihelion and aphelion of these stars is mind blowing

[mlbd]

possibly one of the coolest things I have seen, and to imagine the effort and observation involved putting this together! Whats more is to imagine the radius of the largest Black Hole found so far goes past the orbit of

[George.Coleman]

The fact that Sagittarius A* barely moves (relative) while entire stars whizz around it at large fractions of the speed of light is mind blowing. We forget that we're not just in orbit around our Sun, but actually you, me and everything else in our solar system is captured in the orbit of this gravitational monster. And then there's Andromeda to think about in our wake.

[Andreschannel_SA]

Oooh, how satisfying to find a clip about the universe with the correct spelling of the words "centre" in its title and "behaviour" in the description. You got a new subscriber.

[Domispitaletti]

Could watch it all day👍Need a longer video.

[Hey_MikeZeroEchoP]

A VERY COOL Good Job putting that together, graphics, labels, accuracy ( I'm sure ) and neat sound again, Good Job ESO!!!

[rubensantos]

so many beautiful things happening out there waiting to be discovered but first we must take good care of our "mothership" if we are to ever witness them closer

[gogogravity]

The key for stars to stay out of direct impact is speed. It can take a very long time for a star to be sucked into a black hole.

[arnoldgg]

To put things in perspective, the start S2 at its closest pass to Sgr A*, which is about 120 AU, reaches 8000 Km/s or 2.7% of the speed of light. I calculated that at that distance, S2 is experiencing a G force acceleration of about 18 m/s^2 from the black hole! That is about twice the G force at the surface of earth, while S2 is still 4 times farther away from the black hole compared to Pluto's distance to Sun!

[shattaredentertainment]

To think its keeping the milky way together and spinning. Its size and power is awe inspiring.

[Astronomynatureandmusic]

If we see a star moving at 1% of light speed relative to the black hole, that would be 30.000 km/sec. My question - how does that star experience its own speed relative to the black hole?

[KANA-rdbz]

That is the best metaphor for our short lives: we meet each other for blink of an eye, while each of us has his own orbit. And you cannot tell no ones orbit, you can only simulate it based on your short observation.. as well as simulate your own "orbit"=path.

[hungfao]

Great video but it would be nice to have some kind of time orientation in the corner to judge how fast these stars are moving.

[thedatatreader]

I noticed a lot of similarities between this and the actual timelapse footage from the telescope which was recently made public. I wonder how both would look interpolated.

[rx]

Thanks for the video. Love the space music!

[makismakiavelis]

Question:
Some of these stars eccentricity seems to be close to 0.6 - 0.8, meaning they are highly elliptical. Some of them even look like they have parabolic trajectories. Their acceleration as they near Sag. A* must be tremendous. If we lived on a planet orbiting one of these stars, would we be able to survive or entire planets would get ripped apart due to the intense tidal forces?