Scientists at UCLA claim they’ve determined the identity of a mystery object at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, and it isn’t creamy nougat: The object, known only as “G2,” is believed to be a pair of binary stars that orbited the galaxy’s central black hole before merging into one giant, dusty star.

Early guesses as to G2’s identity mostly centered on it being a mysterious cloud of hydrogen gas. That, according to the research team, wouldn’t make sense. If G2 really were a hydrogen cloud, its meeting with the black hole would not have been so peaceful.

“G2 survived and continued happily on its orbit; a simple gas cloud would not have done that,” said Andrea Ghez, professor of physics and astronomy in the UCLA College. “G2 was basically unaffected by the black hole. There were no fireworks.”

Black holes are serious business, as nothing (not even light) can escape their gravitational pull. That same gravitational pull is what caused the two stars, massive in their own right, to merge together as they were drawn toward the middle. The resulting combined star was no worse for wear, minus some abrasions, Ghez said.

She says that stars formed in such a way typically expand for one million years before leveling out. “This may be happening more than we thought. The stars at the center of the galaxy are massive and mostly binaries. It’s possible that many of the stars we’ve been watching and not understanding may be the end product of mergers that are calm now.” G2 appears to be in that same inflated stage.

G2 is currently being elongated by the black hole’s gravitational pull, while at the same time being shrouded in dust caused by surrounding stars heating the gasses on its surface. With some fancy technology allowing them to see past Earth’s optical distortion, Ghez and her team are rapidly shedding light on black holes and how they work.

“We are seeing phenomena about black holes that you can’t watch anywhere else in the universe,” Ghez added. “We are starting to understand the physics of black holes in a way that has never been possible before.”