Astronomers Spots Intermediate-mass Black Hole
By admin on July 2, 2009 at 2:55 pmA team of astronomers have discovered a new category of black hole. Named as HLX-1, this new black hole is neither massive nor compact and lightweight. So, it is a medium-sized or intermediate black hole. Before it’s discovery, there was no solid evidence about the existence of intermediate mass black holes
Astronomers, led by astrophysicists at the Centre dEtude Spatiale des Rayonnements in France, made the finding in a distant galaxy approximately 290 million light years from Earth. Using the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton X-ray space telescope, the astronomers found that this new black hole is more than 500 times the mass of the Sun.
Until now, identified black holes have been either super-massive in the center of galaxies, or about the size of a typical star (between three and 20 Solar masses). But, it had been long believed by astrophysicists that there might be a third, intermediate class of black holes, with masses between a hundred and several hundred thousand times that of the Sun. So, it is the first solid evidence of a new class of medium-sized black holes.
A black hole is a remnant of a collapsed star with such a powerful gravitational field that it absorbs all the light that passes near it and reflects nothing. HLX-1 (Hyper-Luminous X-ray source 1), lies towards the edge of the galaxy ESO 243-49. It is ultra-luminous in X-rays, with a maximum X-ray brightness of approximately 260 million times that of the Sun. The identification of HLX-1 is considered as an important step towards a better understanding of the formation of the super-massive black holes that exist at the center of the Milky Way and other galaxies.
Category: Space | Tags: Astronomy, Black Hole, Galaxy, Science, Space