GW170817 remnant
// Stellar-mass black hole
Its event horizon is about 8 km across — it would fit inside the Sun.
// Data-inspired illustration— not a photograph
Mythic2%
- ◆ Type
- Stellar-mass black hole
- ◆ Mass
- 2.7 solar massesmeasured
- ◆ Accretion state
- none
- ◆ Distance
- 130 million light-yearsmeasured
// Time capsule
This light set out about 130 million years ago — around the time the last dinosaurs died out.
See it. Aladin sky atlas·SIMBAD record
◆ Discovery points45,431
Bottom 12% for a black hole16
- +10,838EpicStellar-Mass Black Holethe collapsed core of a single massive star
- +10,838EpicCrushed CoreA stellar-mass black hole is the crushed core left when a star far heavier than the Sun runs out of fuel and collapses.
- +5,001EpicA Place, Not a ThingA black hole isn't an object so much as a region — a boundary past which not even light moves fast enough to get back out.
- +5,001EpicFrozen at the EdgeFall towards one and, to a distant observer, you'd appear to freeze at the edge and slowly fade to red, never quite crossing.
- +5,001EpicEmits NothingBlack holes themselves give off nothing. We find them by the frantic orbits and glowing, overheated gas of everything caught nearby.
- +4,087RareStoried Objectwell-known enough to carry a written history in the catalog
- +1,145RareNamed, Not Numberedcarries a proper name, not just a catalogue designation
- +610UncommonIntergalactic Gulf10 million to a billion light-years away
- +594UncommonExtragalacticlies beyond the Milky Way (> 250,000 ly)
- +479Uncommon21st-Century Discoverydiscovered in 2000 or later
- +431UncommonOlder Than Farmingthe light left more than 12,000 years ago, before agriculture
- +392CommonSpace-Age Discoveryfirst catalogued in 1957 or later
- +366CommonOlder Than Writingthe light is more than 6,000 years old
- +263CommonAncient Lightlight left this object over 2,000 years ago
- +223CommonSouthern Skysits south of the celestial equator
- +162CommonAncient Constellationin a constellation catalogued by Ptolemy nearly 2,000 years ago
Probably the lightest black hole known, and the only one whose birth was both heard and seen: two neutron stars merged, gravitational waves arrived first, and telescopes caught the afterglow that forged heavy elements.