don't worry, we'll schedule it for when you're out of town
DEyncourt posted:No pics for this (yet?), but....
Astronomers have been tracking a star in a relatively close orbit around the Milky Way's central black hole.
The star's complete elliptical orbit takes about3016 years. When it made its closest approach of about 120 AU or 18 B km (mind you: Neptune's orbit is only 30 AU/4.5 B km and takes 165 years to orbit around the Sun) this past May 19th, it was moving at about 8 K km/sec or 2.7% the speed of light relative to the black hole.
For size comparison: the Milky Way's central black hole is estimated to be about 4.5 M solar masses which would make its event horizon about 0.09 AU or 13.5 M km in radius or about 1/3rd the average distance between the Sun and Mercury.
I made a correction above.
Here's a couple of pic with linked explanations by the Bad Astronomer:
The second graph shows the COMBINED red shift that was observed in this star during its closest approach to the Milky Way's central black hole. Even though the star was "only" about 18 B km from that black hole at its closest point, this red shift was increased because its light had to "climb out" of the black hole's gravity well.
It looks like there's another dog in the upper right.
TOS posted:one dog herding a couple thousand sheep
I see that and want there to be math.
But much cuter!
juice posted:It looks like there's another dog in the upper right.
maggots
dv posted:TOS posted:one dog herding a couple thousand sheep
I see that and want there to be math.
Tried counting. Fell asleep.
I'd say around 300... ish
NSFW! NSFW!
time to feed up
I'd pull that out with my teeth.
Audrey l
Feed me, Seymour!
That could have gone much differently.
Ground is not supposed to do that. Yikes!
blackshirt gave warning
