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Our Galaxy's Central Black HoleThe discovery of stars rapidly orbiting the bright radio source Sgr A in the center of the Milky Way's core suggests the presence of a black hole. Seven stars have been observed to have proper motions in the vicinity of Sgr A. Extrapolating their observed positions through full orbits shows that they are orbiting a point in space that appears empty. The orbital periods of these stars reveal that a large mass approximately 3.7 million times as massive as our Sun must be present at the location of SgrA.The simulation mwblackhole.gsim shows these seven stars orbiting a black hole. Watch as S0-16 screams past perinigricon at over 4% the speed of light. For an interesting visualization try turning off the trails and speeding up the time step a little. Does this display catch your cat's attention? The starting conditions were supplied from the Astrophysical Journal paper titled "Stellar Orbits Around the Galactic Center Black Hole" by A.M. Ghez, S. Salim, S.D. Hornstein, A. Tanner, J.R. Lu, M. Morris, E.E. Becklin, and G. Duchêne.  Download mwblackhole.gsim (You need to have the program Gravity Simulator installed on your computer first. Click Here to download Gravity Simulator.)
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