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Monday, November 23, 2009

Photo: New Class of Black Hole Found?


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A mysterious ultrabright object (light blue, left) seems to hang just above the center of the galaxy ESO 243-49 in an artist's impression.

The object could be a black hole more than 500 times the mass of the sun, astronomers said in June 2009, making it the "best candidate yet" for a theoretical class of middleweights known as intermediate-mass black holes.

Image by Heidi Sagerud, courtesy Nature