Frank Eishenhauer, senior astronomer at Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, told reporters, "This was the first time we could test the principle of general relativity directly to Einstein's supersonic black hole."
"At Einstein's time, he could not see the dream or dream of what he is showing today," he said.
A team of scientists in the European Southern Observatory, 26 years ago, started monitoring the central area of the galaxy using its very large telescope to observe the motion of stars near the supermassive black hole.
Black hole is 26,000 light years away from the Earth and the Sun's mass is 4 million times.
Scientists chose to follow a star, S2. Along with the 16-year-old class, he knew it would come back to the black hole in 2018.
In more than 20 years, the accuracy of their equipment has improved, and in May 2018, they were able to take very precise measurements in conjunction with scientists from around the world.
This increased the star's orbital speed to 25 million kilometers per hour (15.5 million miles per hour) as it was approaching black holes.
Odele Straub from the Paris Observatory said that the wavelength of the star is spread because it is visible from blue to red in order to avoid gravitational pull of the supermassive black hole.
He said that scientists now hope to follow the other principles of black hole physics.
Rainhard Genzel, MPE, who led the international team, said, "This is the first step on a long road that the team has done for many years and that we expect to continue in the next years."
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