Astronomers have detected the fastest known star in the Milky Way, racing around the galaxy's supermassive black hole at 25,000 kilometres per second. That's about 100,000 times faster than a commercial passenger plane. The star is also orbiting closer to the black hole than any other star observed so far. Researchers led by Stefan Gillessen of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics discovered the star using data from the European Southern Observatory.