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News and Views
Nature 419, 675-676 (17 October 2002) | doi:10.1038/419675a
Astronomy: Into the heart of darkness
Karl Gebhardt
Abstract
The Milky Way, like other galaxies, is thought to harbour a black hole at its centre. The remarkable observation of a star in close orbit around the Galactic Centre is the first firm evidence that this is so.
Reporting on page 694 of this issue, Schödel et al.1 describe the first observation of a nearly complete orbit of a star around the black hole at the centre of our Galaxy, the Milky Way. We have long been able to trace the movement of planets in our own Solar System, and astronomers are now beginning to observe planetary orbits in other stellar systems2, but this is the first time that an orbit has been detected on the galactic scale.
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