An international research team, including three Israeli scientists, among them Prof. Hagai Perets from our depratment, has discovered a new star orbiting very close to the black hole at the center of our galaxy. The discovery will make it possible to measure previously unexplored properties of the massive object at the Galactic Center and gain a better understanding of the history of our galaxy.
“This is probably the most important discovery of a star at the Galactic Center since the discovery of the first star there, S2, and its use in detecting and measuring the black hole at the center of the galaxy, a discovery that earned researchers Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez the Nobel Prize. It will allow us to directly measure properties of the black hole in ways never achieved before,” said Hagai.
Hagai is one of three Israeli scientists who co-authored the paper, alongside Prof. Tsvi Piran and Prof. Re’em Sari of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, as well as many other researchers, including Genzel himself, who honoured us with his presence at a series of lectures at the Faculty this past January.
As early as 2021, in a joint paper with Wenbin Lu and then-graduate student Yael Raveh of the Faculty, now Dr. Raveh, predicted the existence of a star in such an orbit. According to their prediction, the star was originally part of a binary system that was disrupted by the black hole’s tidal forces: one star was captured into a close orbit around the black hole, while the other was ejected at tremendous speed and will eventually leave the galaxy.
