恒星 S301 绕行银河系中心黑洞的延时摄影

探索宇宙！每天都会展示一张我们迷人宇宙的不同图像或照片，并附上一段由专业天文学家（astronomer）撰写的简短说明。

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2026年8月21日

2026 August 21

说明：围绕一个旋转的超大质量黑洞（supermassive black hole）高速运行是什么感觉？这段精选视频展示了对恒星 S301 绕行 Sagittarius A*（位于我们银河系中心的 400 万太阳质量（solar mass）黑洞）进行 4 年观测的延时动画。S301 是于 2023 年利用位于智利阿塔卡马沙漠的欧南台（European Southern Observatory, ESO）的甚大望远镜（Very Large Telescope, VLT）干涉仪（interferometer）发现的。天文学家最近发现，S301 绕黑洞运行一周大约需要 8.7 年，速度可达 25,000 km/s。它比之前探测到的任何恒星都更接近黑洞，距离与土星（Saturn）到太阳的距离相当。由于它非常接近 Sagittarius A*，S301 可用于直接测量黑洞自旋（black hole spin）的速度，并检验爱因斯坦的广义相对论（general relativity）。根据该理论，旋转的黑洞会拖拽周围的时空结构，从而影响附近物体的轨道。

Explanation: What does it feel like to zoom around a spinning supermassive black hole? The featured video is an animation showing a time-lapse of 4 years of observations of the star S301 orbiting Sagittarius A*, the 4-million-solar-mass black hole in the center of our Galaxy. S301 was discovered in 2023 with the Very Large Telescope Interferometer of the European Southern Observatory, located in the Atacama Desert in Chile. Astronomers recently found that S301 takes approximately 8.7 years to go around the black hole and reaches speeds of 25,000 km/s. It comes closer to the black hole than any other stars detected before, at a distance similar to that from Saturn to the Sun. Because it comes so close to Sagittarius A*, S301 could be used to directly measure how fast the black hole spins and test Einstein's theory of general relativity. According to the theory, a spinning black hole drags the fabric of spacetime around itself, affecting the orbits of close-by objects.