juvenilechemist - I just wanted to point out a quick reference to the study of our own galactic center, of our Milky Way, where there is a team of astronomers, headed by Dr. Andrea Ghez (UCLA), that is studying the activity of seven different orbiting stars, orbiting the black hole in the center of our own galaxy. The distance to this "galactic center", is about 43,000 light years. Our galaxy is about 86 to 90,000 light years across.
The galactic center group, which you can look up on yahoo, or any other search engine, uses a method called "adaptive optics", which enables our ground-based telescopes, here on earth, to compensate for our atmospheric distortion, of light that is received for photography.
By using adaptive optics, Dr. Ghez was able to photograph, and coordinate the movement of these seven orbiting stars, and to see their actual velocities speed up, EXTREMELY fast, when encountering their nearest orbit to our galaxies' black hole, named "Sagittarius A".
These seven stars, photographed over the time period of several years, are seen as their velocities change DRAMATICALLY, based on their proximity to their orbit of Sag.A. I believe that their velocity approached somewhere close to .05, or 0.5 percent of the speed of light - that is FAST, for a moving star, or ANY other celestial object, for that matter!
You can view the velocities of these orbiting stars, that Dr. Ghez has photgraphed, just to give you an idea of how something as massive as a black hole, would actually WHIP stars around, instead of swallowing them hole.
The first time I viewed this phenomena, back in 2006, I was simply AMAZED by the shocking beauty, and pure velocity, that celestial bodies could actually assume, in the universe.
But don't take MY word for it - go check it out yourself, on Yahoo! - Best wishes - drewfuss21