Black hole bounty captured at center of Milky Way galaxy in NASA image
Astronomers have found evidence for thousands of black holes near the center of the Milky Way galaxy using data from NASA’s Chandray X-ray Observatory.
According to NASA, this bounty of black holes consists of stellar-mass black holes, which tend to weight between five to 30 times the mass of our sun.
They were discovered within three light-years of the supermassive black hole at the Milky Way’s center — known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*).
“Theoretical studies of the dynamics of stars in galaxies have indicated that a large population of stellar mass black holes — as many as 20,000 — could drift inward over the eons and collect around Sgr A*,” according to the space agency.
This recent analysis using Chandra data is the first observational evidence for such a black hole bounty.
A black hole by itself is invisible. However, a black hole — or neutron star — locked in close orbit with a star will pull gas from its companion.
The material then falls into a disk, heats up to millions of degrees and produces X-rays before eventually disppearing into the black hole.
Several of these X-ray binaries appear as point-like sources in the Chandra image.