Published August 16, 2019
| Supplemental Material + Accepted Version
Journal Article
Open
Relativistic redshift of the star S0-2 orbiting the Galactic center supermassive black hole
- Creators
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Do, Tuan
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Hees, Aurelien
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Ghez, Andrea
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Martinez, Gregory D.
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Chu, Devin S.
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Jia, Siyao
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Sakai, Shoko
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Lu, Jessica R.
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Gautam, Abhimat K.
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O'Neil, Kelly Kosmo
- Becklin, Eric E.
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Morris, Mark R.
- Matthews, Keith
- Nishiyama, Shogo
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Campbell, Randy
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Chappell, Samantha
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Chen, Zhuo
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Ciurlo, Anna
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Dehghanfar, Arezu
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Gallego-Cano, Eulalia
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Kerzendorf, Wolfgang E.
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Lyke, James E.
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Naoz, Smadar
- Saida, Hiromi
- Schödel, Rainer
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Takahashi, Masaaki
- Takamori, Yohsuke
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Witzel, Gunther
- Wizinowich, Peter
Abstract
The general theory of relativity predicts that a star passing close to a supermassive black hole should exhibit a relativistic redshift. In this study, we used observations of the Galactic Center star S0-2 to test this prediction. We combined existing spectroscopic and astrometric measurements from 1995–2017, which cover S0-2's 16-year orbit, with measurements from March to September 2018, which cover three events during S0-2's closest approach to the black hole. We detected a combination of special relativistic and gravitational redshift, quantified using the redshift parameter ϒ. Our result, ϒ = 0.88 ± 0.17, is consistent with general relativity (ϒ = 1) and excludes a Newtonian model (ϒ = 0) with a statistical significance of 5σ.
Additional Information
© 2019 American Association for the Advancement of Science. Received 26 October 2018; accepted 11 July 2019 Published online 25 July 2019. We thank the staff and astronomers at the W. M. Keck Observatory and the Gemini Observatory, especially G. Puniwai, J. McIlroy, S. Yeh, J. Pelletier, J. Hicock, G. Doppmann, J. Renaud-Kim, T. Ridenour, A. Hatakeyama, J. Walawender, C. Jordan, C. Wilburn, T. Stickel, H. Hershey, J. Macilroy, J. Pelletierm, J. Renauld-Kim, A. Rettura, L. Rizzi, C. Alvarez, M. Lemoine-Busserolle, M. Taylor, T. Dupuy, and M. Schwamb, for their help in obtaining the new data. The W. M. Keck Observatory is operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. We wish to recognize that the summit of Maunakea has always held a very important cultural role for the Indigenous Hawaiian community. We are most fortunate to have the opportunity to observe from this mountain. We thank the Subaru Telescope staff, especially Y. Minowa, T.-S. Pyo, J.-H. Kim, and E. Mieda, for their support for the Subaru observations. The Subaru Telescope is operated by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. Funding: Support for this work was provided by NSF AAG grant AST-1412615, the W. M. Keck Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Levine-Leichtman Family Foundation, the Preston Family Graduate Fellowship (held by A.G.), and the UCLA Galactic Center Star Society. S.J. and J.R.L. acknowledge support from NSF AAG (AST-1518273). The W. M. Keck Observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation. S.N. acknowledges financial support by JSPS KAKENHI, grants JP25707012, JP15K13463, JP18K18760, and JP19H00695. H.S. was supported by JSPS KAKENHI grants JP26610050 and JP19H01900. Y.T. was supported by JSPS KAKENHI grant JP26800150. M.T. was supported by JSPS KAKENHI grant JP17K05439 and the Daiko Foundation. W.E.K. was supported by an ESO Fellowship and the Excellence Cluster Universe, Technische Universitat München. R.S. and E.G.-C. have received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC grant agreement 614922. R.S. acknowledges financial support from the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the "Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa" award for the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709). Author contributions: A.M.G., T.D., J.R.L, M.R.M., E.E.B., K.M., and A.H. contributed to conceptualization and design of the experiment. A.M.G., T.D., J.R.L., M.R.M., E.E.B., K.M., D.C., S.J., S.S., A.K.G., K.K.O., S.N., H.S., M.T., Y.T., R.C., Z.C., A.C., J.E.L., G.W., and S.C. made observations. T.D., D.C., S.N., S.C., and A.C., participated in reducing spectroscopic data and making RV measurements. J.R.L., S.J., S.S., A.K.G., Z.C., G.W., R.S., and E.G.-C. reduced imaging data and made astrometric measurements. A.M.G., T.D., A.H., G.D.M., J.R.L., D.C., S.J., R.S., E.G.-C., S.S., A.K.G., W.E.K., G.W., and A.Z. participated in methodology development for improving astrometric and RV measurements. G.D.M., A.H., and T.D. participated in statistical modeling and model comparisons. K.M., R.C., P.W., and J.E.L. participated in building and improving instrumentation. All authors participated in writing and discussions of the paper. Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests. Data and materials availability: Raw observational data are archived at the Keck Observatory Archive (https://www2.keck.hawaii.edu/koa/public/koa.php), the Gemini Observatory Archive (https://archive.gemini.edu/searchform), and the Subaru Mitaka Okayama Kiso Archive (https://smoka.nao.ac.jp/) under the dates and instruments listed in tables S1 and S4. Our reduced astrometric and RV measurements are provided in data S1 and S2. The nested sampling chains are provided in data S3. Software for the orbit modeling and scheduling tool is available at Zenodo (26).Attached Files
Accepted Version - 1907.10731.pdf
Supplemental Material - aav8137_Data_S1.txt
Supplemental Material - aav8137_Data_S2.txt
Supplemental Material - aav8137_Data_S4.txt
Supplemental Material - aav8137_Do_SM.pdf
Files
aav8137_Data_S2.txt
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 97485
- DOI
- 10.1126/science.aav8137
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20190729-110042175
- AST-1412615
- NSF
- W. M. Keck Foundation
- Heising-Simons Foundation
- Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
- Levine-Leichtman Family Foundation
- Preston Family Graduate Fellowship
- UCLA
- AST-1518273
- NSF
- W. M. Keck Foundation
- JP25707012
- Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
- JP15K13463
- Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
- JP18K18760
- Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
- JP19H00695
- Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
- JP26610050
- Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
- JP19H01900
- Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
- JP26800150
- Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
- JP17K05439
- Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
- Daiko Foundation
- European Southern Observatory (ESO)
- Technische Universitat München
- 614922
- European Research Council (ERC)
- SEV-2017-0709
- Severo Ochoa
- Created
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2019-07-29Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2023-03-16Created from EPrint's last_modified field