A star is tracked through a complete close approach to the Galactic centre
node
Infrared monitoring resolved the orbit of the star S2 around the compact radio source Sagittarius A*, including its 2002 pericentre passage, establishing a period of about sixteen years and confining a mass of some millions of suns within a volume small enough to exclude every alternative except a black hole - a dense star cluster of that compactness would not be dynamically stable. It is the measurement that made the Galactic centre black hole the best-established case anywhere.
A node is not a place. Drawing it on a map would assert something about the world that no stored fact supports.
Read in · 1
Evidence · 1
Timeline
No dated observations are stored for this object. Atlas shows what was observed and when — it does not infer a history.
Connections · 2
Assembled narrative · 1
An assembled narrative is available for this object.
Observed changes · 0
No public Signals are attached to this object. Signals show what changed and when it was observed — never a direction or a rank.
Actions
/atlas?object=EVT_S2_ORBIT_2002