Super-fast baby stars circle like a swarm of bees around the supermassive black hole Sgr A*

Observational astronomy shows that newly discovered young stellar objects (YSOs) in the immediate vicinity of the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*, located at the center of our Milky Way, behave differently than expected. They describe similar orbits to already known young evolved stars and are arranged in a certain pattern around the supermassive black hole.

Research shows that Sgr A* causes stellar objects to adopt certain formations. The study is titled “Candidate young stellar objects in the S cluster: Kinematic analysis of a subpopulation of low-mass G objects near Sgr A*” and is published in Astronomy and astrophysics.

It involved researchers from the University of Cologne, Masaryk University in Brno (Czech Republic), Charles University in Prague (Czech Republic), the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn.

About thirty years ago, highly dynamic stars were discovered in the immediate vicinity of the supermassive black hole Sgr A* at the center of the Milky Way.

These stars, also called S stars, orbit the supermassive black hole in a few years at speeds of several thousand kilometers per hour. The stars are surprisingly young and their presence is puzzling, because according to popular theories you would only expect old and faint stars in the immediate vicinity of the supermassive black hole.

The technological advances that have occurred in recent decades and the long periods of observation of the galactic center using a modern telescope currently raise even more questions. For example, in 2012 an object was discovered that researchers assumed was a cloud of gas being ‘sucked up’ by the supermassive black hole.

Although this theory has not yet been confirmed, it has long been unclear exactly what kind of object this could be. In recent years, mounting evidence has shown that it could be a YSO surrounded by a dusty cloud.

In addition to the S stars, researchers are currently investigating a dozen objects in the immediate vicinity of the supermassive black hole, which also have very similar properties. They found that the objects were even significantly younger than already known high-speed stars.

“Interestingly, these YSOs exhibit the same behavior as S stars. This means that in just a few years the YSOs will fly around the supermassive black hole at speeds of several thousand kilometers per hour,” explains Dr. Florian Peißker from the Institute for Astrophysics at the University of Cologne. and corresponding author of the study.

“The S stars turned out to be surprisingly young. According to conventional theories, the additional presence of a stellar kindergarten made up of YSOs is completely unexpected,” added Dr. Peißker.

Moreover, this group of high-speed objects, made up of YSOs and S stars, appears at first glance to resemble a chaotic swarm of bees. But just as a swarm of bees has a pattern and regular formations, so do the YSOs and the S stars.

In this way, the researchers were able to demonstrate that both YSOs and S stars are arranged in a specific, organized way within three-dimensional space.

‘This means that there are specific star constellations that are preferred. The distribution of both star variations resembles a disk, which gives the impression that the supermassive black hole forces the stars to adopt an organized orbit,” says Peißker.