Fastest star in the Milky Way found zipping around black hole

A telescope has spied the fastest known star in our galaxy, racing around the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. The star is zipping around the black hole, reaching speeds of about 15,534 miles per second. That's 100,000 times faster than a commercial plane. “That star is really, extremely fast,” said astronomer Stefan Gillessen with the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics. The newly discovered star also orbits the black hole at closer range than scientists have ever seen, taking just 8.7 years to complete a revolution. It harnesses the black hole's gravity to fly faster without falling in. Gillessen and colleagues uncovered the star in data collected by the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile’s Atacama Desert. Their findings were published Wednesday in the journal Nature.