The largest stellar black hole was found in the Milky Way

Black hole/WM Keck Observatory

Researchers discovered a supermassive black hole called Gaia BH3 at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. The mass of the space object found is 33 times greater than the mass of the Sun.

The black hole has a companion star, thanks to which Gaia BH3 was discovered. The journal Astronomy and Astrophysics writes about it.

The accidental discovery is so important that scientists released details about this black hole earlier than planned to allow other astronomers to make observations as soon as possible.

This is a complete surprise. It is the most massive black hole of stellar origin in our galaxy and the second closest of all discovered, said astronomer Pasquale Panuzzo of the Paris Observatory.

It took a team of more than 300 scientists to confirm the discovery of Gaia BH3. from all continents. They used ground-based observatory telescopes and spectrographs that operate beyond the visible range.

Black hole/ESO/L. Calçada

Stellar-mass black holes are born from the collapse of extremely massive stars and typically weigh five to 10 times the mass of the Sun. One of the closest black holes to Earth and the largest known so far is Cygnus X-1, which was discovered in 1964.

Cygnus X-1 is about 21 solar masses; Gaia BH3 exceeds it and is also extremely close to Earth, only 2,000 light-years away in the constellation Auriga. This makes Gaia BH3 the second closest black hole to Earth discovered so far.