Our GBH

[PB666]

 

I was going to put this in cool sciency stuff, but . . . . .

Heres a question, if a black hole is not exactly at the center of rotation of a galaxy, is it a polynary stellar system? sort of like alpha-centauri, except having a central star it has a central BH.

 

 

 

 

[p1t1o]

I don't think you really ever get anything "exactly at the centre", its comforting and intuitive to think of black holes as fixed, but they are just mass like everything else.

[kerbiloid]

2 hours ago, PB666 said:

if a black hole is not exactly at the center of rotation of a galaxy, is it a polynary stellar system?

Yes, it's a half-trillion-nary stellar system with total mass 10¹² M_sun.

Rather than Solar System, the Big Hole doesn't contain 99.5% of total mass, it's just a mote near the geometrical center. It's just 4*10^-6 of total mass. Like a bunch of hair inside the bath drain hole.

[PB666]

But there are a collection of about a dozen stars that orbit it just like stars in a polynary star system would. When we say the GBH is the center, or is the center of rotaion different (outside) of the boundary of the black hole orbiting stars? Given that its 1 millionth the mass of the galaxy. Might ther be other smaller black hole with similar orbiting stars that we haven't identified yet?

 

[kerbiloid]

Afaik, it has a close companion hole 1000 M_sun and a cloud of several hundreds lesser ones.

upd, translated from ru.wiki:

1996:  there were known >600 stars in 0.5 parsec from Sag A*,
2009: already 6000 known stars in 1 pc from it.

Nov.2004: discovered a cluster of 7 stars in 3 l.y. from Sag A*, probably a core of a lapsed massive star cluster, destroyed by tidal forces. Among them - a black hole 1300 M_sun.

http://www.nature.com/news/2004/041108/full/news041108-2.html

 

Edited May 20, 2016 by kerbiloid