Black hole, hidden in star cluster, discovered in neighboring galaxy

Astronomers discovered a black hole that was apparently hiding in a cluster containing thousands of stars in neighbouring Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy. They found it by using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile. The black hole is 160,000 light-years away from Earth and is 11 times the mass of our sun.

They also observed how the black hole’s gravity played a role in influencing the motion of a nearby star.

It is also the first time that this way was used in detecting a black hole. It could help researchers unearth hidden black holes in our Milky Way and other galaxies.

“A paper describing this discovery has been accepted for publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society,” CNN reported.

“Similar to Sherlock Holmes tracking down a criminal gang from their missteps, we are looking at every single star in this cluster with a magnifying glass in one hand trying to find some evidence for the presence of black holes but without seeing them directly,” said Sara Saracino, research lead and a member of the faculty of engineering and technology from the Astrophysics Research Institute of Liverpool John Moores University, in a statement.

“The result shown here represents just one of the wanted criminals, but when you have found one, you are well on your way to discovering many others, in different clusters,” Saracino added.

As per a CNN report, black holes are tricky to spot, they have a way of giving away their otherwise invisible presence by their actions.

Black holes exude X-rays when they eat up surrounding matter or create gravitational waves when they crash into one another or collide with dense neutron stars.

“The vast majority (of black holes) can only be unveiled dynamically,” said Stefan Dreizler, study co-author and professor at the University of Göttingen in Germany, in a statement.

“When they form a system with a star, they will affect its motion in a subtle but detectable way, so we can find them with sophisticated instruments.”