M31, Andromeda Galaxy, Optical
Data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have been used to discover 26 black hole candidates in the Milky Way's galactic neighbor, Andromeda. This is the largest number of possible black holes found in a galaxy outside of our own. A team of researchers, led by Robin Barnard of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, used 152 observations of Chandra spanning over 13 years to find the 26 new black hole candidates. Nine were known from earlier work. These black holes belong to the stellar-mass black hole category, which means they were created when a massive star collapsed and are about 5 to 10 times the mass of the Sun. This wide-field view of Andromeda contains optical data from the Burrell Schmidt telescope of the Warner and Swansey Observatory on Kitt Peak in Arizona. Release date June 12, 2013.
Size: 3600px × 3600px
Photo credit: © Photo Researchers / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
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Keywords: 2013, 21st, 31, 224, andromeda, astronomical, astronomy, black, body, burrell, candidate, celestial, century, cosmography, cosmological, cosmology, cosmos, deep, event, field, formation, galactic, galaxies, galaxy, group, heavenly, hole, horizon, image, local, m31, messier, nebula, ngc, object, optical, point, return, schmidt, science, sky, space, spiral, star, starburst, stellar-mass, telescope, wide
