Astronomers have detected the largest stellar black hole in the Milky Way galaxy.
This stellar black hole mass is 33 times that of the Sun. It is also the second closest black hole to Earth. It is just 2,000 light years away from the earth.
The discovery was made when researchers were analysing data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission.
So far, around 50 stellar-mass black holes in the Milky Way have been identified.
The newly discovered stellar black hole has been named “Gaia BH3”. It is a most massive black hole of stellar origin in the Milky Way.
When a star with more than eight times the Sun’s mass runs out of fuel, it explodes as a supernova and its core collapses to form a stellar black hole.
Apart from stellar black holes, the Milky Way galaxy has a supermassive black hole.
The supermassive black hole in the Milky Way is about 4 million times the mass of the Sun and is 26,000 light years away.
Scientists are also searching for intermediate black holes, which are tens of thousands of times the Sun’s mass.
