http://arxiv.org/abs/1907.10731
General Relativity predicts that a star passing close to a supermassive black hole should exhibit a relativistic redshift. We test this using observations of the Galactic center star S0-2. We combine existing spectroscopic and astrometric measurements from 1995-2017, which cover S0-2’s 16-year orbit, with measurements in 2018 March to September which cover three events during its closest approach to the black hole. We detect the combination of special relativistic- and gravitational-redshift, quantified using a redshift parameter, $\Upsilon$. Our result, $\Upsilon=0.88 \pm 0.17$, is consistent with General Relativity ($\Upsilon=1$) and excludes a Newtonian model ($\Upsilon=0$ ) with a statistical significance of 5 $\sigma$.
T. Do, A. Hees, A. Ghez, et. al.
Fri, 26 Jul 19
18/84
Comments: 78 pages, 21 figures, accepted to Science, astrometry and radial velocity measurements, and posterior chains available here, this http URL
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