New Black Hole Discovery in Neighboring Galaxy
Our closest galactic neighbor, Andromeda, is approximately 2.5 million light years away and is home to the largest number of black holes discovered outside of our galaxy. Researchers have utilized Chandra data from the last thirteen years to locate and identify twenty-six new black hole candidates. These candidates are examples of stellar-mass black holes and are small on the black hole growth chart, but possess a mass of between 5-10 times the mass of our Sun.
Seven of these newly discovered black holes are located only 1,000 light-years from Andromeda’s galactic center. One possible explanation for this difference is that Andromeda has a larger stellar bulge than the Milky Way making conditions favorable for more black holes to form. Eight of the nine black holes previously identified are hanging around the galactic center’s globular clusters. These clusters are comprised of very old stars clumped together in a spherical pattern around the galaxy’s central region. Andromeda is unique in the fact that astronomers have not yet observed black holes around the Milky Way’s globular clusters.
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