Astronomers have identified the fastest known star in the Milky Way, a faint object that travels around Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy. The phrase fastest star Milky Way black hole describes the newly measured system.

The Associated Press reported that the star is moving at roughly 15,500 miles per second at its fastest. The object is known as S301 and follows a very tight orbit around the black hole at the heart of the Milky Way.

Space.com reported that researchers observed S301 with the GRAVITY instrument on the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer in Chile. The team used observations from 2017, 2021 and 2023 to trace the star’s motion.

The star completes an orbit in about 8.7 years and passes close to Sagittarius A*. Its speed reaches more than 8% of the speed of light, making its path a useful test of how objects behave in the strong gravitational field near a supermassive black hole.

The observations can help researchers study the mass and environment of the black hole. The measurements do not mean that the star is falling into the black hole, because it remains on an orbit and continues around the galactic centre.

The discovery also shows why improved instruments matter in the crowded centre of the Milky Way. Fainter stars can be difficult to separate from the surrounding light, and additional observations may reveal other fast-moving objects that are currently below the limits of detection.