Its mass is estimated to be 8,200 times that of the Sun, making it a very rare object.
Finding black holes is no easy task. Aside from the most energetic objects with luminous accretion disks, these objects tend to absorb light rather than emit it. However, their wild gravitational fields often help us pinpoint their location in our environment.
The closest known. Now an international team of astronomers has discovered nearest black hole We have evidence for it. The newly discovered black hole is only 18,000 light-years away from our solar system.
Medium block. But what really makes this discovery so significant is not the location of the black hole, but its mass. The object has a mass 8,200 times that of our Sun, making it an intermediate black hole.
Known black holes are usually divided into two categories: supermassive black holes, like the one at the center of our galaxy, which have masses millions of times greater than our sun; and stellar black holes, which have a maximum mass of about 100 suns. And between them is a strange void. At least for now.
18,000 light years away. The black hole is located about 18,000 light-years away in a region of our galaxy known as Omega Centauri. By comparison, the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy is 27,000 light-years away. Omega Centauri is a globular cluster of about 10 million stars that can be seen from the southern hemisphere.
20 years of notes. To find where this black hole would hide, the team turned to two decades of Hubble Space Telescope observations of the cluster. Over the course of two decades, they collected 500 images of the cluster and its stars. Curiously, these were mostly images taken to calibrate the space telescope’s instruments.
However, thanks to this, the team was able to analyze the movements of the stars in the cluster, focusing on the fast-moving stars. Seven in particular. These stars have changed their positions significantly over the years. These trips are dedicated to Final Test Team Because there is a black hole in the area.
Furthermore, these stars also allowed the team to estimate the mass causing these displacements through their gravitational force to be 8,200 times that of our Sun. Study details Recently published in the journal nature.
Frozen in time. Astronomers have been wondering for years where these intermediate-sized black holes are. The problem is that, based on current cosmological models, they should be remnants of an older universe, with smaller galaxies with galactic cores that haven’t yet accumulated enough matter to be able to host a supermassive black hole.
This discovery and this fact led the team to hypothesize a new hypothesis about the origin of the Omega Centauri cluster. According to this hypothesis, these stars would be the remains of an ancient galaxy with an intermediate black hole at its center. This galaxy must have been swallowed by the Milky Way, and its central black hole would have been isolated, with no more material to swallow to grow.
In Chataka | Black holes are exciting. And those that form from the collision of two of them are even more so.
Pictures | ESA/Hubble and NASA, M. Haberli (MPIA)
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