record setting stellar mass blackhole

Wed Oct 31, 4:14 PM ET

US astronomers spot massive, record-setting stellar-mass black hole

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US astronomers have discovered the biggest black hole orbiting a star 1.8 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Cassiopeia, with a record-setting mass of 24 to 33 times that of our Sun, NASA said Tuesday.

The massive newcomer beats the previous stellar-mass black hole discovered October 17 in the M33 galaxy that has 16 times the mass of our Sun, the US space agency said.

Like the much larger, supermassive black holes found at galaxy centers, stellar-mass black holes have such powerful gravity fields that not even light can escape them. Astronomers estimate their mass by measuring their gas emissions and the gravitational effect on the stars they orbit.

"We weren't expecting to find a stellar-mass black hole this massive," says Andrea Prestwich of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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[edit on 1-11-2007 by Jbird]

Very interesting! I always thought, if anything, stars would orbit black holes since they have less gravitational influence than black holes do. I thought objects with less mass orbited objects with more mass. I must have been wrong?

Personally I don't think we know anything about black holes. How can gas be emitted if light cannot? and like the previous poster says, how can a black hole orbit a star if it has a greater mass. If it was close enough to the star for either to have any gravitaional pull on eachother, the star would be pulled into the blackhole no?

no they can still have a gravitational efffect and not be pulled in. much like the planets such as earth and our sun, or the earth and the moon. still a gravitational efect but not getting pulled in.

reply to post by DaRAGE


Yes but the planets have a stable orbit around our sun and the moon likewise with Earth. If this black hole was previously in a stable orbit, the change it has undergone in becoming a black hole should have changed its orbit and I would expect the two stars to be pulled towards eachother

reply to post by fiftyfifty


It's a popular misconception that black holes are cosmic vacuum cleaners that suck in everything in the vicinity. Outside of the event horizon, a black hole behaves the same, gravitationally, as any spherical body with the same mass.

So, it's very possible for a body to orbit a black hole indefinitely and vice versa.

Originally posted by fiftyfifty
Personally I don't think we know anything about black holes. How can gas be emitted if light cannot? and like the previous poster says, how can a black hole orbit a star if it has a greater mass. If it was close enough to the star for either to have any gravitaional pull on eachother, the star would be pulled into the blackhole no?

They are probably referring to the x-rays that are produced as matter (gas) falls into the black hole. As for solving the two body problem, both masses 'orbit' around some geocenter that's not necessarily exactly in the middle of the larger mass. I suppose the black whole orbits with respect the rest of the universe or the galaxy etc.