Astronomers have identified the largest stellar black hole ever discovered in the Milky Way, with a mass 33 times that of the Sun, according to a report published Tuesday.
It has been named Gaia BH3. The black hole with that name was discovered “by chance” from data collected by the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission, Pasquale Panuzzo, an astronomer at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) at the Observatoire de Paris, told the AFP news agency. told. Gaia, the largest black hole in the Milky Way galaxy, is located BH3 2,000 light years from Earth in the constellation Aquila.
Because Gaia’s telescope can provide precise positions of stars in the sky, astronomers were able to characterize their orbits and measure the mass of the star’s invisible companion, which is 33 times the mass of the Sun.
Further observations from ground-based telescopes confirmed that it was a black hole with a mass far greater than any stellar black hole previously known in the galaxy. “No one expected to find a high-mass black hole hidden nearby that has not been detected until now. This is the kind of discovery you make once in your research lifetime,” Panuzzo said in a press release. “
The stellar black hole was discovered when scientists observed a “wobble” motion on its orbiting companion star. “We may see a star slightly smaller than the Sun (about 75 percent of its mass) and much brighter, revolving around an invisible companion,” Panuzzo said.
Stellar black holes are formed by the collapse of massive stars at the end of their lives and are smaller than supermassive black holes whose composition is still unknown. Such giants have already been detected in distant galaxies through gravitational waves. But “never at our place,” Mr. Panuzzo said.
BH3 is a “passive” black hole and is so far away from its companion star that its material is unable to separate from it and therefore emits no X-rays – making it difficult to detect.
Gaia’s telescope identified the first two dormant black holes in the galaxy (Gaia BH1 and Gaia BH2). Gaia has been operating 1.5 million kilometers from Earth for the past 10 years and has delivered 3D maps of the positions and motions of more than 1.8 billion stars in 2022.
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