Massive Stellar Black Hole, 33 Times The Mass Of Sun Discovered In Milky Way Galaxy 'By Accident'
Astronomers have announced the discovery of the 'most massive stellar black hole' to be identified in the Milky Way galaxy. The black hole, Gaia BH3, was discovered by an international research team while looking into the latest data group recorded in the European Space Agency's Gaia space telescope.
How?Gaia BH3 was found
According to the scientists, the stellar-mass black hole was spotted because it imposes an odd ¡®wobbling¡¯ motion on the companion star orbiting it.?
Based on data from the European Southern Observatory¡¯s Very Large Telescope (ESO¡¯s VLT) and other ground-based observatories were used to verify the mass of the black hole, putting it at an impressive 33 times that of the Sun.
What are stellar black holes
Stellar black holes are formed from the collapse of massive stars and the ones previously identified in the Milky Way are on average about 10 times as massive as the Sun. Even the next most massive stellar black hole known in our galaxy, Cygnus X-1, only reaches 21 solar masses, making this new 33-solar-mass observation exceptional.
Most massive black hole in our galaxy
This is not the most massive black hole in our galaxy ¡ª that title belongs to Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the Milky Way¡¯s centre, which has about four million times the mass of the Sun. But Gaia BH3 is the most massive black hole known in the Milky Way that formed from the collapse of a star.
Just 2000 light years away from earth?
Researchers at Israel's Tel Aviv University (TAU) said that Gaia BH3 is a mere 2000 light-years away in the constellation Aquila, making it the second-closest known black hole to Earth.
No one was expecting to find a high-mass black hole lurking nearby, undetected so far,¡± says Gaia collaboration member Pasquale Panuzzo, an astronomer from the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) at the Observatoire de Paris - PSL, France. "This is the kind of discovery you make once in your research life."
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