Star Orbiting Black Hole Animation

The precise data collected by NASA’s Hubble and James Webb space telescopes enabled a team of astronomers to chart the visible star’s orbital path over a 20 year-plus period. Researchers recorded this segment of the star’s orbit during its closest approach to its stellar-mass black hole companion, oMEGACat BH-2. Based on the timespan covered by the Hubble-Webb dataset, the team calculated the remainder of the visible star’s orbital path and found that it orbits oMEGACat BH-2 once every 94 years. This makes it the longest-period black hole binary ever known and gives a clue to the pair’s origin. The duo probably formed dynamically, meaning the visible star and its stellar-mass black hole companion found each other in the crowded globular star cluster Omega Centauri.