# Statistical Challenges in Fitting Stellar Orbits around the Supermassive Black Hole at the Galactic Center

## TL;DR

This paper discusses the statistical challenges in accurately fitting stellar orbits around the supermassive black hole at the Galactic Center, crucial for testing General Relativity and understanding black hole physics.

## Contribution

It highlights the importance of addressing statistical issues like prior effects and parameter space complexity in orbit fitting to improve astrophysical inferences.

## Key findings

- Identification of prior effects obscuring physical signals
- Analysis of large parameter space challenges
- Methods to improve confidence interval coverage

## Abstract

Over two decades of astrometric and radial velocity data of short period stars in the Galactic center have the potential to provide unprecedented tests of General Relativity and insight into the astrophysics of supermassive black holes. Fundamental to this is understanding the underlying statistical issues of fitting stellar orbits. Unintended prior effects can obscure actual physical effects from General Relativity and the underlying extended mass distribution. At the heart of this is dealing with large parameter spaces inherent to multi star fitting and ensuring acceptable coverage properties of the resulting confidence intervals within the Bayesian framework. This proceeding will detail some of the UCLA Galactic Center Group's analysis and work in addressing these statistical issues.