Fastest star in the galaxy

S4714 is the fastest star ever seen. It orbits around the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, Sagittarius A*, and at the closest point in its orbit it travels at more than 8% of light speed, or 15,000 miles per second (24,000 km/second). At its closest point, S4714 travels at about 12.6 AU (1.88 billion km) from Sagittarius A*, which is roughly between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus from the Sun.

The discovery of S4714 was led by astrophysicist Florian Peissker of Germany, who with collaborators discovered the star using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile.