Discovery of a star sensitive to the spin of Sgr A*

arXiv:2607.12664 · astro-ph.GA, gr-qc · Submitted 2026-07-14 · Read on arXiv

K. Abd El Dayem, R. Abuter, N. Aimar, P. Amaro-Seoane, A. Berdeu, J. -P. Berger, G. Bourdarot, W. Brandner, A. Burkert, D. Calderon, C. Correia, J. Cuadra, R. Davies, D. Defrere, L. Delit, A. Drescher, F. Eisenhauer, L. Esteras Otal, M. Fabricius, H. Feuchtgruber, N. M. Foerster Schreiber, A. Foschi, P. Garcia, R. Garcia Lopez, A. Generozov, R. Genzel, S. Gillessen, F. Gonte, X. Haubois, S. F. Hoenig, M. Houlle, S. Joharle, A. Kaufer, J. Kammerer, P. Kervella, J. Kolb, L. Kreidberg, L. Labadie, S. Lacour, O. Lai, R. Laugier, J. -B. Le Bouquin, J. Leftley, B. Lopez, D. Lutz, F. Mang, A. Merand, F. Millour, M. Montarges, N. Morujao, H. Nowacki, M. Nowak, S. Oberti, J. Osorno, T. Ott, T. Paumard, C. Paladini, H. B. Perets, K. Perraut, G. Perrin, R. Petrov, P. O. Petrucci, T. Piran, N. Pourre, S. Rabien, D. C. Ribeiro, S. Robbe-Dubois, M. Sadun Bordoni, J. Sanchez Bermudez, D. Santos, R. Sari, J. Sauter, S. Scheithauer, J. Scigliuto, J. Shangguan, T. T. Shimizu, F. Soulez, J. Stadler, C. Straubmeier, E. Sturm, M. Subroweit, C. Sykes, L. J. Tacconi, P. Thevenet, I. Urso, F. Vincent, J. Woillez, G. Zins

astro-ph.GA, gr-qc

Submitted: 2026-07-14

Comments: accepted for publication in Nature

Code: https://github.com/KerwannTEP/JuDOKA

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The gist: Residing in the center of the Milky Way, Sgr A* is the closest massive black hole (MBH).

Terminology

Abstract

Residing in the center of the Milky Way, Sgr A* is the closest massive black hole (MBH). Its vicinity has allowed measuring individual stellar orbits around it. The stars act as test particles and probe the gravitational potential around the 4.3 times 10 6 M MBH. These observations have determined the central mass to sub-percent precision, and the mildly relativistic motions of stars have given access to the dominant relativistic corrections, the gravitational redshift, the transverse Doppler effect, and the prograde precession imposed by the Schwarzschild metric nature of the potential. These effects are of order beta squared = (v/c) squared (for velocity v and speed of light c). The Kerr metric for a rotating black hole leads to corrections of order beta cubed. Here, we report the discovery of a faint main-sequence star (m K = 19.3), S301, on a 8.7-year orbit and with small enough a pericenter distance, such that the star's peak velocity reaches 25000, km/s. Within the measurement capabilities of current near-infrared interferometry and future spectroscopy on an extremely large telescope, S301's motion is directly sensitive to the spin of Sgr A*. The high eccentricity of S301 suggests that it is the captured component of a binary that was torn apart via the Hills mechanism.

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