Centre of our galaxy has a ‘zone of avoidance’ and we don’t know why

Space

The stars that orbit close to the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole are already tough to explain – but there also seems to be some stars missing

By Leah Crane

There seem to be some stars missing near the centre of the Milky Way

Shutterstock/structuresxx

There is a strange and unexplained “zone of avoidance” for stars near the centre of the Milky Way. Stars at any given distance from the supermassive black hole at the galactic centre, called Sagittarius A*, should have a random distribution of shapes to their orbits, but one group of stars is mysteriously missing from that distribution.

The group of about 200 stars that reside near Sagittarius A* are called S-stars, and their very existence is somewhat …

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