An intermediate-mass black hole of over 500 solar masses in the galaxy ESO 243-49

A mid-sized black hole There should be some intermediate-mass black holes out there, in the gap between the stellar mass and super-massive populations. Too large to have formed by the collapse of a massive star, but too small to be found at the centre of galaxies, they are thought to form in dense s...

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Veröffentlicht in:Nature (London) 2009-07, Vol.460 (7251), p.73-75
Hauptverfasser: Farrell, Sean A., Webb, Natalie A., Barret, Didier, Godet, Olivier, Rodrigues, Joana M.
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Sprache:eng
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Zusammenfassung:A mid-sized black hole There should be some intermediate-mass black holes out there, in the gap between the stellar mass and super-massive populations. Too large to have formed by the collapse of a massive star, but too small to be found at the centre of galaxies, they are thought to form in dense stellar clusters or globular clusters. Until now there was no strong observational evidence for their existence. But the 'missing link' of the black hole world may have now been found with the discovery of a variable ultraluminous X-ray source, in the edge-on spiral galaxy ESO 243–49. The extreme luminosity of the source — HLX-1 for short — is consistent with the presence of an intermediate-mass black hole of over 500 solar masses. Ultraluminous X-ray sources are extragalactic objects located outside the nucleus of the host galaxy with bolometric luminosities exceeding 10 39 erg s −1 . These extreme luminosities imply the presence of an accreting black hole with a mass of ∼10 2 –10 5 solar masses, but the existence of such intermediate mass black holes is in dispute. A variable X-ray source with an implied mass of ∼500 solar masses is now reported in the galaxy ESO 243–49. Ultraluminous X-ray sources are extragalactic objects located outside the nucleus of the host galaxy with bolometric luminosities 1 exceeding 10 39  erg s -1 . These extreme luminosities—if the emission is isotropic and below the theoretical (Eddington) limit, where the radiation pressure is balanced by the gravitational pressure—imply the presence of an accreting black hole with a mass of ∼10 2 –10 5 solar masses ( ). The existence of such intermediate-mass black holes is in dispute, and though many candidates have been proposed, none are widely accepted as definitive. Here we report the detection of a variable X-ray source with a maximum 0.2–10 keV luminosity of up to 1.1 × 10 42  erg s -1 in the edge-on spiral galaxy ESO 243-49, with an implied conservative lower limit for the mass of the black hole of ∼500 .
ISSN:0028-0836
1476-4687
DOI:10.1038/nature08083