The Milky Way’s black hole is about 4 million times the Sun’s mass, putting it in the middle of the pack. They range in mass from 100,000 to billions of times the mass of the Sun, far too massive to be born from a single star. Supermassive Black Holes are the monsters of the universe, living at the centers of nearly every galaxy. When that happens, the black hole can strip material from the star, causing the gas to heat up and glow brightly in X-rays. These are probably the most common black holes in the cosmos, but are hard to detect unless they have an ordinary star for a companion. Other stellar mass black holes form from the collision of neutron stars, such as the ones first detected by LIGO and Virgo in 2017. When some of these stars run out of the nuclear fuel that makes them shine, their cores collapse into black holes under their own gravity. Stellar Mass Black Holes are born from the death of stars much more massive than the Sun.

NASA's Chandra Adds to Black Hole Birth Announcement Hunting for and characterizing stellar mass black holes, which can include information about their birth process and evolution. Observing clusters of stars to find intermediate mass black holes, and modeling how they shape their environments.Ī Middleweight Black Hole is Hiding at the Center of a Giant Star Cluster That includes “disruption” events, where black holes tear stars or other objects apart, creating bursts of intense light.īlack Hole Meal Sets Record for Length and Size Hunting for black hole interactions with other astronomical objects. In addition, CfA researchers use cutting-edge supercomputers to create theoretical models for the disks and jets of matter that black holes create around themselves. Studying the infall of matter - called “accretion” - onto black holes, using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes. CfA astronomers use telescopes across the entire spectrum of light, from radio waves to X-rays to gamma rays. Observing supermassive black holes in other galaxies to understand how they evolve and shape their host galaxies. The EHT is composed of many telescopes working together to create one Earth-sized observatory, all monitoring the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy M87, leading to the first image ever captured of a black hole.ĬfA Plays Central Role In Capturing Landmark Black Hole Image Using the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) to capture the first image of a black hole’s “shadow”: the absence of light that marks where the event horizon is located.

Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian scientists participate in many black hole-related projects:

Black hole in sun