New black hole discovered in nearby galaxy

Written by PTI | Melbourne | Updated: Mar 1 2014, 00:19am hrs
BMQ1 is a stellar mass black hole and was likely formed when a star died. Reuters
Astronomers have found a new superpowered small black hole in a nearby galaxy, located 15 million light years away from Earth.

Astronomers found that the black hole, named MQ1, in the nearby galaxy M83 is a standard-sized small black hole, rather than a slightly bigger version that was theorised to account for all its power.


"MQ1 is classed as a microquasar - a black hole surrounded by a bubble of hot gas, which is heated by two jets just outside the black hole, powerfully shooting out energy in opposite directions, acting like cosmic sandblasters pushing out on the surrounding gas," Soria said.




"As a comparison, the most powerful microquasar in our galaxy, known as SS433, is about 10 times less powerful than MQ1," Soria said.

Although the black hole in MQ1 is only about 100 kilometres wide, the MQ1 structure - as identified by the Hubble Space Telescope - is much bigger than our Solar System, as the jets around it extend about 20 light years from either side of the black hole.




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