Astronomers have discovered the first small black hole hidden inside Omega Centauri, a giant cluster containing around 10 million stars.
Scientists believe the cluster could hold roughly 10,000 stellar-mass black holes, but until now none had been clearly identified. Using more than 20 years of observations from the Hubble Space Telescope, supported by new data from the James Webb Space Telescope, researchers spotted a star moving around an invisible and extremely heavy object.
The hidden black hole weighs about 4.5 times as much as our Sun, while its companion star takes around 94 years to complete a single orbit. Located approximately 18,000 light-years from Earth, the discovery could help astronomers understand how black holes form and pair up inside crowded star clusters.
Photo credit: Hubble/NASA/TwoPointO Media
