A European team of astronomers has used the new GRAVITY instrument installed at the ESO, which is a second generation instrument of the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI), to obtain interesting observations from the center of the Milky Way, combining the light of the four Unit Telescopes 8.2m for the first time.

These results provide insight into the innovative science that GRAVITY has been able to produce when probing the gravitational fields of high intensity near the central supermassive black hole and test the validity of the general theory of relativity Einstein.

In 2018 one of these stars, the S2, will pass very close to the black hole and present the best opportunity to study the effects of gravity of great intensity and to test, in the near future, the predictions of the Einstein’s theory of General Relativity.

The GRAVITY instrument is the most powerful tool for measuring the positions of the S2 star today.