Astronomers’ world-first discovery: twin stars trapped in galactic black hole orbit

A laser aims at the centre of our galaxy, in the heart of the brightest part of the Milky Way. G. Hüdepohl/ESO

At the centre of the Milky Way is a supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A*. It is roughly 27,000 light years from Earth and 23.5 million kilometres in diameter.

In a world first, a team of astronomers led by Florian Peißker from the University of Cologne, Germany, have discovered a binary star system orbiting this black hole.