APOD: 2026 August 21 – Time-Lapse of the Star S301 Orbiting the Black Hole in the Center of the Galaxy

NASA Science reports a new animation that compresses four years of observations into a time‑lapse of star S301 circling Sagittarius A*, the four‑million‑solar‑mass black hole at the Milky Way’s core. The star, discovered in 2023 with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer, completes an orbit every eight point seven years at roughly twenty‑five thousand kilometres per second, coming within a distance comparable to Saturn’s orbit around the Sun – closer than any star seen before. Because of that tight dance, S301 offers a direct way to gauge the black hole’s spin and test Einstein’s theory of general relativity, the story notes, published on Friday.

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