Astronomers have observed a strange black hole in binary system VFTS 243. Located in the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud, this binary system consists of an ultra hot, blue star with 25 times the Sun’s mass and a black hole, which is at least 9 times the mass of the Sun.
Despite how the illustration looks, the two binary components are not to scale, as in reality, the blue star is about 200,000 times larger than the black hole. The Tarantula Nebula itself is located 160,000 light-years from Earth and considered an extremely luminous non-stellar object. It has a luminosity so intense that if it were as close to Earth as the Orion Nebula, the Tarantula Nebula would actually cast shadows. Speaking of black holes, this is what a black hole sounds like.
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Note that the ‘lensing’ effect around the black hole is shown for illustration purposes only, to make this dark object more noticeable in the image. The inclination of the system means that, when looking at it from Earth, we cannot observe the black hole eclipsing the star,” said the ESO.
