This artist’s impression shows what the binary system VFTS 243 might look like if we were observing it up close. The system, which is located in the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud, is composed of a hot, blue star with 25 times the Sun’s mass and a black hole, which is at least nine times the mass of the Sun. The sizes of the two binary components are not to scale: in reality, the blue star is about 200 000 times larger than the black hole.  Note that the 'lensing' effect around the black hole is shown for illustration purposes only, to make this dark object more noticeable in the image. The inclination of the system means that, when looking at it from Earth, we cannot observe the black hole eclipsing the star. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada.

The first “dormant” black hole outside our Galaxy

An international group of astronomers with the participation of scientists from the Astronomical Observatory of the University of Warsaw discovered a “dormant” stellar-mass black hole in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a neighbor galaxy to our own. It is the first object of this type found outside the Milky Way. The discovery was made thanks to … Continue reading The first “dormant” black hole outside our Galaxy

University of Warsaw