An artist’s impression of the star’s orbit with the black hole. ESO/L. Calçada
A huge stellar black hole just 2,000 light-years away in the constellation Aquila, 33 times as massive as the Sun, was discovered.
Scientists have found the largest stellar black hole ever seen in our Milky Way using data from the Gaia mission by the European Space Agency.
Named it BH3, was spotted because it’s causing its nearby star buddy to wobble strangely as it orbits. This black hole is a whopping 33 times as massive as the Sun.
Researchers confirmed its weight using telescopes like the Very Large Telescope from the European Southern Observatory. Most stellar black holes in our Galaxy are about 10 times the Sun’s size on average. The previous record-holder, Cygnus X-1, was 21 times bigger than the Sun.
But, the biggest black hole in our Galaxy is Sagittarius A*, in the center of our Milky Way, which is about 4 million times heavier than the Sun.
This new black hole is just 2,000 light-years away from us, in the Aquila constellation. That makes it the second-closest black hole to Earth that we know of.
source ESO
