Discovery: New Black Hole HLX-1 Has 500 Solar Masses And 260 Million Times Our Sun's Brightness
Wednesday, July 1, 2009 - 18:14
in Astronomy & Space
Astronomers using ESA’s XMM-Newton X-ray observatory have discovered a black hole they labeled HLX-1 (Hyper-Luminous X-ray source 1), which lies towards the outskirts of the galaxy ESO 243-49, approximately 290 million light-years from Earth and weighs more than 500 solar masses, making it a 'missing link' between lighter stellar-mass and heavier supermassive black holes. This discovery is the best detection to date of a new class that has long been searched for: intermediate mass black holes. The discovery has been made by an international team of researchers working with XMM-Newton data, led by Sean Farrell from the Centre d’Etude Spatiale des Rayonnements, now based at the University of Leicester. read more
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