An unusual medium black hole discovered in a nearby galaxy

When astronomers built a model without a black hole, the stars in the center were very slow compared to the observations. When they added the black hole to their model, they got velocities matching the observations. They say that the black hole is also evidence that this object is an abstract nucleus.

“The stellar velocities that we’re seeing provide direct evidence that there is some kind of black mass in the middle,” Pichetti said. It is very difficult for globular clusters to form large black holes. But if it’s a bare nucleus, then there must already be a black hole, the remnant of a smaller galaxy that fell into the larger galaxy. “

The researchers hope to spot more bare cores that may contain intermediate-mass black holes. It provides an opportunity to learn more about the population of black holes at the center of low-mass galaxies, and to discover how galaxies are made up of smaller building blocks.

“We know that large galaxies generally form by merging smaller galaxies, but these bare cores allow us to reveal the details of those earlier interactions,” Seth said.

The study, conducted by researchers from the University of Utah, Liverpool John Moores University, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Michigan State University, the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics in Potsdam, the European Space Agency, the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy and the Astronomical Observatory in Strasbourg was published in Astrophysical Journal. This article is based on a press release issued by the University of Utah.