Astrophysicists by using archival data from an X-ray
satellite have identified what they now consider is a strange midsize black
hole. We are familiar with stellar black holes produced by dying stars; they
are comparatively small, evaluating up to about 25 times the mass of our sun. According
to our current knowledge, we know of supermassive black holes, now supposed to exist
in in the centres of most galaxies, comprising hundreds of thousands to
billions of times the mass of our host star. But this black hole called M82 X-1
– the perkiest X-ray source in the galaxy Messier 82(M82), situated 12 million
light-years away, is supposed to be about 400 times the sun’s mass. And that typical
characteristic makes it very rare. Tod Strohmayer, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard
Space Flight Center, noted on the rareness of midsize black holes: “Between the
two extremes of stellar and supermassive black holes, it’s a real desert; with
only about half a dozen objects whose inferred masses place them in the middle
ground.” You can learn more about this rare black hole in the videos below……
 |
A composite image of the nearby galaxy Messier 82. Image
credit: full-field – X-ray: NASA / CXC / JHU / D. Strickland; optical: NASA /
ESA / STScI / AURA/ Hubble Heritage Team; IR: NASA / JPL-Caltech /Univ. of AZ /
C. Engelbracht; inset – NASA / CXC / Tsinghua University / H. Feng et al.
|
