Lifeboat Foundation

In a few months, astronomers are going to be pointing their telescopes to Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy.

That’s because it’s going to be buzzed by a closely orbiting star — providing another context for testing Einstein’s theory of general relativity.

The star is called S0-2, one of a class of stars known as S-stars (not to be confused with S-type stars) that closely orbit Sgr A*, which has an estimated mass of around 4.3 million Suns.