


The kilometer is commonly used on road signs to indicate the distance to travel to a given location, on maps to indicate scale, for odometer indication in automotive industry. The CIPM (The International Committee for Weights and Measures) officially abolished the prefix "myria-" and the "myriametre" in 1935, leaving the kilometer as the recognised unit of length instead of myriametre. In the mid 19th century the kilometer was already in everyday use in the Italy and in Netherlands and the myriametre was still in use in France. The myriametre (10000 meters) and "lieues de Poste" (Postal leagues, 4288 meters) were preferred to the "kilometer" for everyday use in France in 19th century. The kilometer (kilometre in UK spelling) is a unit of length/distance in the metric system (SI Unit system) equivalent to one thousand meters.Īlthough the meter was defined in 1799 in France, the kilometer was first adopted for everyday use by the Dutch in 1817 under local name of the mijl. Primary exceptions are the United Kingdom, Liberia, Myanmar and the United States of America, where the mile remains as standard as a part of imperial system. It's a standard measure for travelled distances, geographical distances and maps in most countries excluding the USA and the United Kingdom where mile is still used for this purpose.īetween geographical locations on land, and in most countries is the official unit for this purpose. The kilometer is used as a unit used to measure distances or lengths. Kilometer (km) is a unit of Length used in Metric system. Institute of Astrophysics (previously I.Foot (ft) is a unit of Length used in Standard system. S4716 had to move inwards, for example by approaching other stars and objects in the S cluster, which caused its orbit to shrink significantly,’ he added. ‘Stars cannot form so easily near the black hole. ‘The short-period, compact orbit of S4716 is quite puzzling,’ Michael Zajaček, an astrophysicist at Masaryk University in Brno who was involved in the study, said. Moreover, the discovery sheds new light on the origin and evolution of the orbit of fast-moving stars in the heart of the Milky Way. ‘For a star to be in a stable orbit so close and fast in the vicinity of a supermassive black hole was completely unexpected and marks the limit that can be observed with traditional telescopes,’ said Peissker. A total of five telescopes observed the star, with four of these five being combined into one large telescope to allow even more accurate and detailed observations. However, in brief moments we can observe the surroundings of the central black hole.’īy means of continuously refining methods of analysis, together with observations covering almost twenty years, the scientist now identified without a doubt a star that travels around the central supermassive black hole in just four years. ‘The view into the centre of our galaxy is therefore often obscured by S2.
#A 8000 kilometre movie
‘One prominent member, S2, behaves like a large person sitting in front of you in a movie theatre: it blocks your view of what's important,’ said Dr Florian Peissker, lead author of the new study. This cluster, called S cluster, is home to well over a hundred stars that differ in their brightness and mass. In the vicinity of the black hole at the centre of our galaxy is a densely packed cluster of stars. The study has been published in The Astrophysical Journal. One AU corresponds to 149,597,870 kilometres. S4716 comes as close as 100 AU (astronomical unit) to the black hole – a small distance by astronomical standards. The star, S4716, orbits Sagittarius A*, the black hole in the centre of our Milky Way, in four years and reaches a speed of around 8000 kilometres per second. Researchers at the University of Cologne and Masaryk University in Brno (Czech Republic) have discovered the fastest known star, which travels around a black hole in record time.
