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Scientists from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan recently created a new map of the Milky Way. The galaxy map found that Earth is 2,000 light-years closer to the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way than previously believed. The researchers also found that Earth orbits the black hole faster than previous estimates.
In 1985, the International Astronomical Union announced that Earth was 27,700 light years from the black hole at the center of the galaxy, called Sagittarius A *. However, the Japanese researchers conducted a 15-year analysis using the VERA radio astronomy project and found that the Earth is 25,800 light-years away.
The research also found that the Earth orbits 7 km / s faster than previously believed. The researchers are clear that the additional velocity does not mean that the Earth is suddenly plunging headlong into the black hole. Scientists say the new findings simply give a better model of the Milky Way galaxy.
25,800 light years is still such a distant distance that it’s hard to wrap your mind. At that distance, it would take light 25,800 years to reach the black hole at the galactic center. Researchers using the VERA astrometric catalog created a position and velocity map that outlines the center of the Milky Way and objects within the galaxy. The first astrometric catalogs were released this year with data from 99 objects.
The positioning indicates that the Earth orbits the Galactic Center, where the black hole resides, at 227 km / s. Scientists initially believed that the orbit was at a speed of 220 km / s. VERA stands for Very Long Baseline Interferometry Exploration of Radio Astronomy, and the project started in 2000 using interferometry to aggregate data from other radio telescopes in Japan.
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