{"id":5445,"date":"2017-03-28T15:42:35","date_gmt":"2017-03-28T19:42:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/?p=5445"},"modified":"2017-03-28T15:42:35","modified_gmt":"2017-03-28T19:42:35","slug":"scientists-observe-star-in-closest-orbit-around-a-black-hole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/scientists-observe-star-in-closest-orbit-around-a-black-hole\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists observe star in closest orbit around a black hole <img src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/canada_flag_icon_small.gif\">"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_5446\" style=\"width: 730px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5446\" class=\"size-full wp-image-5446\" src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/black-hole.jpg\" alt=\"(Image by Bahramian et al.)\" width=\"720\" height=\"405\" srcset=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/black-hole.jpg 720w, http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/black-hole-300x168.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-5446\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>(Image by Bahramian et al.)<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<p>In a cluster of stars 14,800 light years away from Earth, one star is involved in the closest orbital dance with a black hole ever observed, circling the black hole twice in an hour. This could be the tightest orbital distance between a black hole and a white dwarf star in the Milky Way, with the distance between them just twice that of the Earth and the Moon. While researchers don&#8217;t believe the white dwarf&#8217;s at risk of falling into the black hole, it may be consistently losing its mass as a result of their close companionship.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Authors:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Arash Bahramian, Craig O. Heinke, Vlad Tudor, James C. A. Miller-Jones, Slavko Bogdanov, Thomas J. Maccarone, Christian Knigge, Gregory R. Sivakoff, Laura Chomiuk, Jay Strader, Javier A. Garcia, Timothy Kallman<\/p>\n<p><strong>Lead author:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Arash Bahramian, University of Alberta, and Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Michigan, Email: <a href=\"mailto:bahramian@pa.msu.ca\">bahramian@pa.msu.ca<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/academic.oup.com\/mnras\/article\/3052451\/The\" target=\"_blank\">Original paper<\/a> published in\u00a0<em>Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society<\/em> on March 13, 2017.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a cluster of stars 14,800 light years away from Earth, one star is involved in the closest orbital dance with a black hole ever observed, circling the black hole twice in an hour. This could be the tightest orbital distance between a black hole and a white dwarf star in the Milky Way, with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5446,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[1388,2920,2921],"class_list":["post-5445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-paper-of-interest","tag-astronomy","tag-black-hole","tag-star"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/black-hole.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4DqbN-1pP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5445"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5447,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5445\/revisions\/5447"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}