Fact Sheet
Mid-Sized Black Hole
The X-ray glow of a disk of superhot gas suggests that it encircles a black hole about 10,000 times as massive as the Sun. The object is in the galaxy M74, about 32 million light-years from Earth. The orbiting Chandra X-Ray Observatory measured the X-ray energy from the object, which is enclosed in a box at top. Astronomers have discovered many likely black holes that are either a few times the Sun's mass or millions of times its mass. This object is one of the best candidates for a new class, called intermediate mass black holes. They probably formed from the mergers of many smaller black holes in the heart of a dense star cluster, or they are the leftover black holes from the hearts of small galaxies that were swallowed by larger ones. [Credit: NASA/CXC/U. Michigan/J.Liu et al./NOAO/AURA/NSF/T.Boroson]
|