Classified as Gaia BH3, the found space object is 33 times the mass of the Sun and has a companion star, thanks to which it was discovered. This is reported by UNN with reference to the European Southern Observatory (ESO).
Details
Astronomers have found the most massive stellar black hole known to date in our galaxy. The mass of the space object, which was named Gaia BH3, is about 33 times higher than that of the Sun. This makes this black hole the largest of all currently studied and reliably confirmed in its stellar class.
For reference
Stellar-mass black holes are born from the collapse of extremely massive stars and usually weigh five to 10 times the mass of the Sun. One of the black holes closest to the Earth and still the largest known is Cygnus X-1, which was discovered in 1964. "Cygnus X-1" is about 21 solar masses; Gaia BH3 exceeds it and is also extremely close to Earth, at a distance of only 2,000 light years in the constellation of the Eagle. This makes Gaia BH3 the second closest black hole to Earth discovered so far.
No one expected to find a hitherto undiscovered high-mass black hole hiding so close. You make such a discovery only once in your research life
Interestingly, the scientists made the discovery when they were checking observations from the European Gaia probe for data publication. The companion star of the black hole is driven into a kind of oscillatory motion by its massive friend - and this was noticed by the researchers.
To confirm the discovery of the black hole, the researchers used data from observatories on Earth, such as the Atacama Large Array telescope in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile.
Recall
A new study has shown that the tendency for stars to move chaotically in galaxies is largely related to the age of the galaxy, with older galaxies exhibiting more chaotic stellar orbits over time.
The Hubble telescope has taken images of the galaxy ESO 185-IG013, which shows active star formation, probably caused by a recent merger of galaxies.