The mass of the Milky Way's supermassive black hole, SgrA*, is roughly 4.3 million times the mass of the Sun, give or take a few hundred thousand solar masses. But a team of astronomers thinks they can dial that accuracy down to know with an error rate of a single solar mass. They propose to do this by measuring gravitational waves from SgrA* as brown dwarfs orbit it closely. These dwarfs act like natural probes mapping out the warped space around SgrA*.


The post Here's How We Could Measure the Mass of SgrA* to Within One Solar Mass appeared first on Universe Today.



Source: Here's How We Could Measure the Mass of SgrA* to Within One Solar Mass