The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
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Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
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A NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope viewofgalaxy 6dFGS gJ215022.2-055059– the large white-yellow blob at the centre of the image – and neighbouring galaxies, combined with X-ray observations of a black hole at the galaxy’s outskirts – the small white-purple dot to its lower left – obtained with NASA’s Chandra X-ray observatory.
This is the best-ever candidate for a very rare and elusive type of cosmic phenomenon: a so-called intermediate-mass black hole in the process of tearing apart and feasting on a nearby star.
The discovery was based on data from ESA’s XMM-Newton X-ray space observatory, NASA’s Chandra and Swift X-ray telescopes, and a number of other telescopes on ground and in space, including Hubble.
This rare breed of black hole was spotted as it disrupted and tore apart a nearby star, gorging on the resulting debris and throwing off an enormous amount of light in the process. It has a mass of around fifty thousand times that of the Sun, and is located within a massive cluster of stars on the outskirts of a galaxy some 740 million light-years away.
This view comprises data from Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys.
Explore this object in ESASky.