Astronomers have discovered a star that orbits the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy every four years. That’s the shortest orbit ever observed around a supermassive black hole.
The newly discovered star, called S4716, is about four times more massive than our Sun and twice as hot. It survives extraordinary conditions, orbiting this black hole at a distance as close as 100 astronomical units, less than three times the distance of Pluto from the Sun.
