There is a giant black hole at the centre of our galaxy, a study has confirmed.
German astronomers tracked the movement of 28 stars circling the centre of the Milky Way, using two telescopes in Chile.
The black hole is four million times more massive than our Sun, according to the paper in The Astrophysical Journal.
More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7774287.stm
I didn't think thiss was exactly new. A short movie showing the movements of the stars at the centre of the galaxy was shown at a BAA meeting I attended quite a few years ago. I suspect this is just more progress on the same research. Or maybe they just finally published the results...
There was a nice program on the TV a while back that stated this also. It also went on to say that there is a suppermassive black hole at the heart of just about every galaxy. It is very common appaarently.
Indeed. I burrowed a little, and the movie I saw at the BAA was on 23rd April 2005, in a talk on "Quasars, black holes and galaxy formation" by Omar Almaini of Nottingham University. Other OAS folks may have been at the same talk, because it was on the day of our visit to the RAS library.
On this page:
http://www.eso.org/public/outreach/press-rel/pr-2008/phot-46-08.html#46h
you can find time lapse videos of stars orbiting the black hole. They are just light days from the centre.
Mark