An ‘extragalactic’ intruder may be lurking among the stars near the Milky Way’s black hole, scientists say. Where did he come from?

• The black hole Sgr A* is surrounded by many stars
• Scientists discovered that one originated in another corner of the universe

Astronomers may have discovered an extragalactic intruder among the stars orbiting the supermassive black hole at the heart of our Milky Way, Sagittarius A*.

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They found a strange star near the Milky Way’s black hole

Sgr A* is surrounded by a cavalcade of stars whose rapid orbits have helped astronomers determine that it has a mass of about 4.5 million solar masses. However, the existence of these stars is somewhat of a mystery. That’s because the intense gravity of Sgr A* should make the heart of the Milky Way an environment too turbulent for stars to form.

This leads scientists to believe that the stars around Sgr A* may have migrated to this region after being born somewhere else in the universe. New findings by an international team of scientists led by researcher Shogo Nishiyama of Miyagi University of Education have revealed that some of these stars may have a much longer history than previously thought. Specifically, the researchers found that the star, designated S0-6, may be more than 10 billion years old and may have formed 50,000 light-years from its current location.

To reveal the true origin of S0-6, Nishiyama and his colleagues studied the star for eight years using the Subaru Telescope: an optical-infrared telescope located near the summit of Maunakea on the island of Hawaii, operated by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ).

And they found that the star they observe at a distance of 0.3 arcseconds from Sgr A* has a chemical composition similar to stars found in the Milky Way’s small satellite galaxies, such as the Small Magellanic Cloud and the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy.

S0-6 may have formed in another part of the universe

The researchers therefore believe that S0-6 was born in a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way that our galaxy cannibalized sometime during the last 10 billion years. So the star wandered for tens of thousands of light-years and ended up spiraling around the black hole Sgr A* instead of taking a direct path to the center of the Milky Way.

If all this is true, S0-6 is the first extragalactic star discovered near Sgr A*. “Did S0-6 Really Form Outside the Milky Way Galaxy? Does she have any companions or did she travel alone?’ he asks with Nishiyama, adding that more observations are needed to confirm this theory.

Preview photo source: NASA, source: Space, Proceedings of the Japan Academy, Series B.