Extremely rare black hole discovered in the center of our Galaxy

Using data from ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) and other telescopes, astronomers have discovered a rare new medium-mass black hole in IRS 13, a population of dusty stellar objects in the nuclear star cluster of our Milky Way Galaxy. This is one of the rarest types of black holes that has been found incredibly close to Sagittarius A*.

This new black hole belongs to the intermediate mass class, meaning that it is not light enough to form from a star that becomes a supernova. But it is also not heavy enough to be classified as supermassive. However, there are only a few black holes with an intermediate mass between 100 and 100,000 solar masses, IflScience writes.

The discovery comes from the IRS star cluster. This is a cluster of hot massive stars with a special object in the center. Initially, it was believed that the central object was a massive star, but thanks to high-resolution observations, scientists were able to determine that it was not a star at all. This rare discovery challenges our understanding of black hole formation and offers a new perspective on the evolution of galaxies.

"The star cluster IRS 13 is located at a distance of 0.1 light years from the center of our Galaxy. On the one hand, IRS 13 appears to interact with Sagittarius A*, a 4 million solar mass black hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy, resulting in an orderly movement of stars," says Dr. Florian Peisker of the University of Cologne.

Using data from the VLT, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and NASA's Chandra X-ray telescope, astronomers have found strong evidence of a disk-like structure in IRS 13, SkiNews writes.

"Observations at different wavelengths now show that the reason for the compact shape of IRS 13 may be a medium-mass black hole located in the center of the star cluster. We were able to observe the characteristic X-ray emission and ionized gas rotating at several 100 km/s in the disk around the inferred location of the medium-mass black hole. Another indication of the presence of a medium-mass black hole is the extremely high density of the star cluster, which is higher than that of any other known star cluster in our Milky Way. IRS 13 is an important building block for the growth of our central black hole Sagittarius A*," the study published in the Astrophysical Journal says.

Further observations will be needed to confirm the presence of a medium-mass black hole and learn more about the cluster. Observations from the JWST and the upcoming Very Large Telescope will certainly help with this.

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