Artist’s impression of S2 passing supermassive black hole at centre of Milky Way

This artist’s impression shows the path of the star S2 as it passes very close to the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way. As it gets close to the black hole the very strong gravitational field causes the colour of the star to shift slightly to the red, an effect of Einstein’s general theory of relativity.

In this graphic the colour effect and size of the objects have been exaggerated for clarity.