Astronomers from the University of Sheffield have discovered the second biggest stellar mass black hole ever recorded, positioned farther away from Earth than any other found before.
The discovery was made using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at Paranal, which is in a part of the European Southern Observatory (ESO), the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation of Europe that carries a building and operation programme of ground-based astronomy observing facilities.
The black hole falls in the category of a stellar-mass black hole, made from the remnants of massive stars. It has a mass equal up to twenty times the mass of the sun.
Other stellar-mass black holes found in the Milky Way only weigh up to ten times the Sun’s mass.
“This is the most distant stellar-mass black hole ever weighed, and it’s the first one we’ve seen outside our own galactic neighbourhood, the Local Group,” said Paul Crowther, a Professor of Astrophysics at the University.
The newly discovered black hole is paired with a Wolf-Rayet star. These types of stars are near the end of their lives, expelling all outer layers before turning supernova, leaving their core to implode as a black hole.
Professor Crowther added: “If the system survives this second explosion, the two black holes will merge, emitting copious amounts of energy in the form of gravitational waves as they combine. It will take some few billion years until the actual merger, far longer than any human time scales.”
The team’s findings are due to be published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.