Fact Sheet
Big Appetite
An artist's concept shows the heaviest star-sized black hole yet discovered and its supermassive companion star, which form a system known as M33 X-7 (the seventh X-ray source discovered in the galaxy M33). The blue star is about 50 times as massive as the Sun, and pumps tremendous amounts of gas and energy into space. Some of the gas forms a small but bright disk around the black hole, at right. By measuring how the star and black hole move around each other, and eclipses as they pass in front of each other, astronomers have determined that the black hole is about 16 times as massive as the Sun. The black holes in the hearts of galaxies are much larger, but this is the largest black hole that formed from the collapse of a single star. Most similar black holes are about half as massive as this one. [NASA/CXC/M.Weiss]
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