33 times the mass of the sun

Huge black hole discovered in the Milky Way

Thousands of black holes have already been discovered in the Milky Way.(Bild: AFP)

The most massive stellar black hole known to date in our galaxy - the giant known as "Gaia BH3" - has about 33 times the mass of our sun.

Previously discovered stellar black holes in the Milky Way measure on average only ten times the mass of the sun, the previously largest known - "Cygnus X-1" - about 21 solar masses.

Stellar black holes are formed from stars. "Nobody expected to find a massive black hole lurking nearby that has remained undiscovered until now," says the European Southern Observatory (Eso), quoting astronomer Pasquale Panuzzo from the Observatoire de Paris.

You only make this kind of discovery once in your life as a researcher.

Pasquale Panuzzo

 Black hole just 2000 light years away
"You only make this kind of discovery once in your life as a researcher." According to Eso, the black hole is extremely close to Earth at a distance of "only" 2000 light years. A light year is the distance that light travels in one year - a distance of 9.46 trillion kilometers.

The center of the Milky Way(Bild: AFP)

Thousands of black holes have already been discovered in the Milky Way.(Bild: AFP)

The black hole's companion star is set into a kind of wobbling motion by its massive companion - and this attracted attention. The "Gaia" mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) aims to record the positions, movements, distances and brightness of almost two billion celestial bodies.

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Was sind schwarze Löcher?

Black holes are objects with such a strong gravitational force that not even light can escape from them. They are formed when large stars with many times the mass of our sun explode as supernovae at the end of their existence and the remaining stellar remnant collapses.

Apart from stellar black holes, there are supermassive black holes that are thought to exist in the centers of most galaxies. These black holes can have billions of times the mass of our sun. The most massive in our galaxy is "Sagittarius A*" in the center of the Milky Way, which has about four million times the mass of the sun.