Comment by SideburnsOfDoom
3 days ago
> mass at least a hundred thousand times more than our sun
The sun is 99.86% of the mass of solar system. So if you orbit the centre of mass of the solar system, you orbit the sun, more or less. Give or take a small correction for Jupiter.
But ... there are a lot more than a hundred thousand stars in the milky way. So if I guess right, the ratio of central mass vs the rest would be very different for the Milky way? It's more of a blob.
Even at "The current best estimate of its mass is 4.2 million solar masses" it does not dominate? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagittarius_A*
It's not a singular source of gravity at the center though, it's the collection of all mass in the galaxy interacting with each other as well. Like a daisy chain of gravity, which explains why it looks like a spiral instead of an evenly distributed circle.
(I think anyway, I just made it up, I'm not learned in this area, just a HN shitposter)
Right, not a point source and not exactly a blob either; more like swirls. I'm not learned in this area either.