Posted on Thursday 17 October 2002

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Surprising observations of a star swiftly orbiting the cloudy heart of the Milky Way Galaxy have verified with near certainty the existence of a central black hole, a theoretical object that still eludes direct detection.

Astronomers watched the star for a decade, tracking two-thirds of its path around the galactic center. No object has ever before been seen so close to the center of any galaxy, nor has any other object previously been observed making more than a small fraction of its orbital trek around a galaxy.

"We could not believe our eyes," said Thomas Ott, an MPE researcher who co-led the study along with Schoedel and MPE director Reinhard Genzel. "We suddenly realized that we were actually witnessing the motion of a star in orbit around the central black hole, taking it incredibly close to that mysterious object."