written by jonathan o’callaghan, on february 3rd, 2022
what: a wandering black hole found outside of a galaxy
when: discovered january 31st, 2022
who/where: marina rejkuba from the european southern observatory in germany, a co-author on the paper
kareem el-badry from the harvard-smithsonian center for astrophysics, who was not involved in the paper
feryal özel from the university of arizona
kailash sahu from the space telescope science institute in baltimore, the lead author on the arxiv preprint detailing the object’s discovery
david bennett at nasa’s goddard space flight center, a co-author with sahu and others on the discovery paper
lukasz wyrzykowski from warsaw university, a co-author on this latest discovery paper who also hunts for rogue black holes with gaia
interesting fact: “weighing in at seven times the mass of our sun, the dark object is by far the best-yet candidate for a free flating stellar-mass black hole” (tidbit of info at the top of the article)
Read More