Published in Physics World, 7 Jan 2009
Star formation is a steady process, requiring vast clouds of cold gas to gradually accumulate and compact. So in the region around the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy, which is awash with violent gravitational “tidal” forces, one would expect stars to be few and far between.
Over the years, however, many stars have been spotted near the galactic centre — which raises the question: were the stars able to survive a perilous birth, or did they somehow migrate inwards from elsewhere?
Now, a group of astronomers from the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, US, and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, Germany, has evidence that stars can indeed be born near the galactic centre. Using the Very Large Array of radio telescopes in New Mexico, they have discovered two baby stars, or “protostars”, just a few light-years from the Milky Way’s black hole. […]
The rest of the article is available here.