Black Hole Spotted in Nearby Galaxy Marks Another Discovery for Astronomy

M83, a nearby spiral galaxy, has recently provided astronomers and scientists with exciting new information. The latest it has to offer is a detailed black hole named MQ1, which Australian astronomers found earlier this week.

This small, yet super-powered black hole was spotted through the use of multiple telescopes, including the Hubble Space Telescope. Despite being considered "small", the 100 kilometers wide MQ1 black hole is more massive than our solar system. Its power is what has startled the astronomers.

Dr. Robert Soria is a senior research fellow at Curtin University in Australia and a member of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR). He led the charge on this discovery and has provided much insight on the topic.

"By studying microquasars (black holes surrounded by a bubble of hot gas) such as MQ1, we get a glimpse of how the early universe evolved, how fast quasars grew and how much energy black holes provided to their environment," said Dr. Soria in this EurekAlert! release. "As a comparison, the most powerful microquasar in our galaxy, known as SS433, is about 10 times less powerful than MQ1."

Additionally, Soria believes the discovery of MQ1 provides further information about the galaxy's evolution because such black holes were much more common 12 billion years ago. Black holes in general are believed to have formed when the universe began. MQ1's presence is rare, which will make it a topic of research in the coming years.

NASA defines a black hole as a place in space where gravity pulls so much that even light cannot get out, as found on NASA's "What is a Black Hole?" webpage. They are also invisible to the human eye, which is why the technology of space telescopes is significant because it can spot them. The M83 galaxy is being examined through the use of the Hubble Space Telescope, the Magellan Telescope, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Australian Telescope Compact Array, and the Very Large Array. These telescopes and technologies all provide different functions, and their discovery of the MQ1 black hole is just one of many in studying the M83 galaxy.