{"id":2314,"date":"2005-10-23T13:05:00","date_gmt":"2005-10-23T17:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles-wp\/?p=2314"},"modified":"2005-10-23T13:05:00","modified_gmt":"2005-10-23T17:05:00","slug":"deep-in-the-core","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/2005\/10\/23\/13\/05\/deep-in-the-core\/","title":{"rendered":"Deep In The Core"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eso.org\/outreach\/press-rel\/pr-2002\/video\/vid-02-02.mpg\">video<\/a> of what is currently thought to be the closest star to the supermassive <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Black_hole\">black hole<\/a> at the centre of our galaxy. The <a href=\"http:\/\/antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov\/apod\/ap051023.html\">star orbits the black hole<\/a> in a <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Elliptical_orbit\">highly elliptical orbit<\/a> with a period of 15 years or so, but at its closest approach it <a href=\"http:\/\/antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov\/apod\/ap051023.html\">swings within 17 light hours of the black hole<\/a> (around three times the distance between the Sun and Pluto). In the video, you can <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eso.org\/outreach\/press-rel\/pr-2002\/pr-17-02.html\">see the star ricochet past its closest approach to the black hole<\/a>. This slingshot effect enabled astronomers to further pinpoint the mass of the black hole, which is confidently estimated at 2 million suns or so. The mass observation, coupled with the size contraints observed, indicates the object at the centre of the galaxy is definitely composed of some <a href=\"http:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/astro-ph\/0210426\">exotically dense form of matter<\/a>. It&#8217;s like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0553382950\/ref=nosim\/meehawl-20\">M. John Harrison&#8217;s <i>Light<\/i><\/a> come to life!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A video of what is currently thought to be the closest star to the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy. The star orbits the black hole in a highly elliptical orbit&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2314\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}