"Middleweight" Black Holes Discovered
Massive black holes exist in spiral galaxies, such as galaxy NGC 1313, 15 million light-years from Earth, shown here in visible light. Such a black hole is 100 to 10,000 times as massive as the Sun yet occupies a region smaller than the Moon. Previously, only two types of black holes were thought to exist: stellar black holes, several times as massive as the sun, and supermassive black holes, with the mass of a million or billion suns. The intermediate-sized black hole in NGC 1313 resides in the heart of the fiery ball, just above the center.
Credit: Digitized Sky-Survey, STScI
This is an artist's conception of an intermediate-sized black hole, which exist in the heart of spiral galaxies throughout the Universe. Black holes emit no light. What is visible from Earth is the accretion disk (matter swirling into the black hole, often glowing in X-ray energy) and jets (beams of charge particles moving away from the black hole). An intermediate-sized black hole is 100 to 10,000 times as massive as the Sun yet occupies a region smaller than the Moon. Previously, only two types of black holes were thought to exist: stellar black holes, several times as massive as the sun, and supermassive black holes, with the mass of a million or billion suns.
CREDIT: NASA Goddard
