Discovery of the largest stellar black hole in the Milky Way "near" Earth

An artistic image of the system containing the largest stellar black hole yet discovered in our galaxy. The blue line represents the star's orbit, the bright dot on the left. — Image: European Southern Observatory

And astronomers identified The largest stellar black hole ever discovered in the Milky Waywith block 33 times larger than the sunThe European Southern Observatory (ESO), headquartered near the German city of Munich, announced today, Tuesday (16).

A black hole is called Jaya BH3was discovered accidentally through data collected by Gaia missionAstronomer Pascual Panozzo from the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) at the Paris Observatory, said from the European Space Agency.

Gaia, dedicated to mapping the Milky Way, has located BH3 very close to Earth 2 thousand light years, in the constellation Aquila. A light year is the distance light travels in one year – 9.46 trillion kilometers.

“No one expected to find a high-mass black hole nearby, which has not been discovered yet,” Panozzo said. “This is the kind of discovery you make once in your research life.”

On average, stellar black holes in the Milky Way are ten times the mass of the Sun, the largest size ever known. Chicken X-1 Its mass is about 21 solar masses.

This artist compares three stellar black holes in our galaxy: Gaia BH1, Cygnus Gaia BH3 is the most massive stellar black hole yet found in the Milky Way. The radii of black holes are directly proportional to their mass, but note that the black holes themselves are not directly imaged. — Image: European Southern Observatory

The stellar black hole was discovered when scientists observed A He swayed in the star The comrade who was running around.

The black hole's companion star is put into a kind of oscillating motion by its giant companion, astronomers at the European Southern Observatory have discovered.

“We were able to see a star slightly smaller than the Sun (about 75% of its mass) and brighter, and it was orbiting an invisible companion,” Panozzo said.

Other observations made by telescopes on Earth confirmed that it is a black hole with a mass much greater than the mass of stellar black holes already found in the Milky Way Galaxy.

You black holes They are objects with a gravitational force very strong Not even light can escape who are they.

Stellar black holes arise from the collapse of massive stars at the end of their lives, and are smaller than supermassive black holes, whose composition is still unknown. These giants have already been detected in distant galaxies using gravitational waves. “But never in our country,” Panozzo said.

BH3 is a “dormant” black hole that is too far away from its companion star to shed its matter, and therefore does not emit X-rays – making it difficult to detect.

The analysis of the new discovery was published in the journal Astronomy and astrophysics.

Publish the clearest picture of a black hole