the black hole at the center of the milky way is 5 solar masses.
the black hole at the center of the milky way is 5 solar masses.
how many solar masses is the black hole at the center of the milky way?
5
the vlbi radio observations of sagittarius a* could also be aligned centrally with the images so s2 could be seen to orbit sagittarius a*. from examining the keplerian orbit of s2, they determined the mass of sagittarius a* to be solar masses, confined in a volume with a radius no more than 17 light-hours (120 au). later observations of the star s14 showed the mass of the object to be about 4.1 million solar masses within a volume with radius no larger than 6.25 light-hours (45 au) or about 6.7 billion kilometres. s175 passed within a similar distance. for comparison, the schwarzschild radius is 0.08 au. they also determined the distance from earth to the galactic center (the rotational center of the milky way), which is important in calibrating astronomical distance scales, as . in november 2004 a team of astronomers reported the discovery of a potential intermediate-mass black hole, referred to as gcirs 13e, orbiting 3 light-years from sagittarius a*. this black hole of 1,300 solar masses is within a cluster of seven stars. this observation may add support to the idea that supermassive black holes grow by absorbing nearby smaller black holes and stars.
sagittarius a*
in the theory of general relativity, a black hole could exist of any mass. the lower the mass, the higher the density of matter has to be in order to form a black hole. (see, for example, the discussion in schwarzschild radius, the radius of a black hole.) there are no known processes that can produce black holes with mass less than a few times the mass of the sun. if black holes that small exist, they are most likely primordial black holes. until 2016, the largest known stellar black hole was 15.65±1.45 solar masses. in september 2015, a rotating black hole of 62±4 solar masses was discovered by gravitational waves as it formed in a merger event of two smaller black holes. , xte j1650-500 was reported by nasa and others to be the smallest-mass black hole currently known to science, with a mass 3.8 solar masses and a diameter of only 24 kilometers (15 miles). however, this claim was subsequently retracted. the more likely mass is 5–10 solar masses.
stellar black hole