grobi<p>[...]</p><p>"We discovered seven stars that should not be there," explained Maximilian Häberle of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany, who led this investigation. "They are moving so fast that they would escape the cluster and never come back. The most likely explanation is that a very massive object is gravitationally pulling on these stars and keeping them close to the center. The only object that can be so massive is a black hole, with a mass at least 8,200 times that of our Sun."</p><p>Several studies have suggested the presence of an IMBH in Omega Centauri. However, other studies proposed the mass could be contributed by a central cluster of stellar-mass black holes, and had suggested the lack of fast-moving stars above the necessary escape velocity made an IMBH less likely in comparison.</p><p>"This discovery is the most direct evidence so far of an IMBH in Omega Centauri," added team lead Nadine Neumayer of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany, who initiated the study, together with Anil Seth from the University of Utah, Salt Lake City. <br>[...]<br>If confirmed, at a distance of 17,700 light-years the candidate black hole resides closer to Earth than the 4.3-million-solar-mass black hole in the center of the Milky Way, located 26,000 light-years away.</p><p>Omega Centauri is visible from Earth with the naked eye and is one of the favorite celestial objects for stargazers living in the southern hemisphere. Located just above the plane of the Milky Way, the cluster appears almost as large as the full Moon when seen from a dark rural area. It was first listed in Ptolemy’s catalog nearly 2,000 years ago as a single star. Edmond Halley reported it as a nebula in 1677. In the 1830s the English astronomer John Herschel was the first to recognize it as a globular cluster.</p><p><a href="https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/nasas-hubble-finds-strong-evidence-for-intermediate-mass-black-hole-in-omega-centauri/" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">science.nasa.gov/missions/hubb</span><span class="invisible">le/nasas-hubble-finds-strong-evidence-for-intermediate-mass-black-hole-in-omega-centauri/</span></a></p><p><a href="https://defcon.social/tags/space" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>space</span></a> <a href="https://defcon.social/tags/blackhole" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>blackhole</span></a> <a href="https://defcon.social/tags/astrophysics" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>astrophysics</span></a> <a href="https://defcon.social/tags/astrophotography" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>astrophotography</span></a> <a href="https://defcon.social/tags/photography" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>photography</span></a> <a href="https://defcon.social/tags/astronomy" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>astronomy</span></a> <a href="https://defcon.social/tags/science" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>science</span></a> <a href="https://defcon.social/tags/nature" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>nature</span></a> <a href="https://defcon.social/tags/NASA" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>NASA</span></a> <a href="https://defcon.social/tags/ESA" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>ESA</span></a></p>