Astronomers Spot Rare, Mid-Sized Black Hole in Our Galaxy

The black hole, if confirmed, is in the star cluster Omega Centauri, about 17,700 light-years away, and it could hold lessons about how such structures are formed

Will Sullivan
Daily Correspondent

July 11, 2024
A dense cluster of blue, red and orange stars



The central region of the Omega Centauri globular cluster, where the Hubble Space Telescope found strong evidence for a medium-sized black hole. ESA / Hubble, NASA, Maximilian Häberle (MPIA)


While all black holes are massive from a human perspective, they actually come in a wide range of sizes. But these sizes usually fall at either end of a spectrum—either relatively small or absolutely enormous. Now, researchers have detected a rare, medium-sized black hole in the nearby star cluster Omega Centauri, according to a new paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

“This is exciting, because there are only very few other black holes known with a similar mass,” Nadine Neumayer, a co-author of the study and an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany, says in a statement from NASA.

Astronomers have located many smaller black holes—stellar remnants ranging from 5 to 150 times the mass of our sun. They’ve also spotted supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies with masses greater than 100,000 times that of the sun. But only a few black hole candidates have been found within these extremes, containing between 150 and 100,000 solar masses.

“People have wondered, is it difficult to find them because they are just not there, or because it’s difficult to detect them?” study lead author Maximilian Häberle, an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, says to NPR’s Nell Greenfieldboyce.

More:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/astronomers-spot-rare-mid-sized-black-hole-in-our-galaxy-180984689/