Intermediate Black Hole

Produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute’s Office of Public Outreach in collaboration with NASA’s Universe of Learning partners: Caltech/IPAC, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

 

Video imagery:

·       Wide view, globular cluster Messier 4: ESO, La Silla Observatory 

·       Inset, center of globular cluster Messier 4: ESA/Hubble, NASA

·       Galaxy ESO 243-49. Credit: NASA, ESA, and S. Farrell (Sydney Institute for Astronomy, University of Sydney)

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Galaxies, planets, stars, and gases of various colors in outer space. Text, News from the Universe 

 

May 31, 2023. Intermediate Black Hole. 

 

Messier 4. Thousands of white dots and several orange-tinted dots hang in the black of space, more concentrated towards the center. 

 

Text, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has found evidence for the presence of a rare intermediate-sized black hole in the heart of globular star cluster Messier 4. 

 

A central section of the star cluster is highlighted in a square shape. We get closer and the stars become white, pink, orange, and blue. They vary in size and intensity. 

 

Text, Intermediate black holes weigh somewhere between 100 and 100,000 of our suns. 

 

They are a long-sought missing link between stellar-mass black holes created by exploded stars and supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies. 

 

The suspected intermediate black hole was characterized using the motion of stars caught in its gravitational field. 

 

In the center of the highlighted area, small stars move up and to the left as if in a stream. 

 

A graphic of a red X inside a red circle appears over the center of the star cluster. The moving stars are mostly to its bottom left. Text, More study will be required to confirm that this is a black hole, or perhaps some other stellar mechanism we have yet to discover. We return to the view of the cluster with multiple colored stars. 

 

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Text, This news was brought to you in part by the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.