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Sunday, July 4, 2010

NGC 300 X-1



Astronomers using ESO's [European Southern Observatory] Very Large Telescope (VLT) have detected a stellar-mass black hole much further away than any other previously known. With a mass twenty times that of the Sun, this is also the second most massive stellar mass black hole ever found. The newly announced black hole lies in a spiral galaxy called NGC 300, six million light-years from Earth.

This video zooms in onto the position of the system containing the stellar-mass black hole, and finishes with an artist's impression of the system.

Video credit: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2/P. Crowther/L. Calçada

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