Summary

Description	Astronomers using ESO’s MUSE instrument on the Very Large Telescope in Chile have discovered a star in the cluster NGC 3201 that is behaving very strangely. It appears to be orbiting an invisible black hole with about four times the mass of the Sun — the first such inactive stellar-mass black hole found in a globular cluster. This important discovery impacts on our understanding of the formation of these star clusters, black holes, and the origins of gravitational wave events. This short ESOcast takes a look at this discovery and its significance. The video is available in 4K UHD. The ESOcast Light is a series of short videos bringing you the wonders of the Universe in bite-sized pieces. The ESOcast Light episodes will not be replacing the standard, longer ESOcasts, but complement them with current astronomy news and images in ESO press releases. Credit:ESO. Editing: Nico Bartmann. Web and technical support: Mathias André and Raquel Yumi Shida. Written by: Rosa Jesse, Nicole Shearer an
Date	2018-01-17
Source	commons.wikimedia.org
Author	ESO

Licensing

CC BY

Attribution: ESO, 2018-01-17