Guy Perrin
Dept. Sciences Univers (SDU), CNRS (Paris, France)
Amphithéâtre Henri Mineur, Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris
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| « Exploring the supermassive black hole at the galactic center and testing general relativity with GRAVITY » |
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Guy Perrin |
| The existence of black holes has been predicted for a long time, even before general relativity was sketched by Albert Einstein. Their extreme compactness makes them difficult to explore on spatial scales close to the event horizon. Sagittarius A*, at the center of the Galaxy, is the black hole with the largest angular size. A collaboration of European astronomers has built the GRAVITY instrument for the Very Large Telescope Interferometer of ESO to test the black hole nature of Sgr A* thanks to observations at unprecedented spatial scales. General relativity can consequently also be tested at these scales in an extreme regime of gravity. I will present the first results we have just obtained with the star S2, the closest star known to Sgr A*. I will also give an outlook of what results we expect next and will mention other observations we make of supermassive black holes hosted by AGNs. |
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vendredi 19 octobre 2018 - 11:00 Amphithéâtre Henri Mineur, Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris |
| Page web du séminaire / Seminar's webpage |