A 15.65-solar-mass black hole in an eclipsing binary in the nearby spiral galaxy M 33

Jerome A. Orosz (), Jeffrey E. McClintock, Ramesh Narayan, Charles D. Bailyn, Joel D. Hartman, Lucas Macri, Jiefeng Liu, Wolfgang Pietsch, Ronald A. Remillard, Avi Shporer and Tsevi Mazeh
Additional contact information
Jerome A. Orosz: San Diego State University, 5500 Campanile Drive, San Diego, California 92182-1221, USA
Jeffrey E. McClintock: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
Ramesh Narayan: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
Charles D. Bailyn: Yale University, PO Box 208101, New Haven, Connecticut 06520-8101, USA
Joel D. Hartman: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
Lucas Macri: National Optical Astronomy Observatory, 950 North Cherry Avenue, Tucson, Arizona 85719, USA
Jiefeng Liu: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
Wolfgang Pietsch: Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik, Giessenbachstraße, D-85741 Garching, Germany
Ronald A. Remillard: MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, 37-287, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA
Avi Shporer: Wise Observatory, Tel Aviv University
Tsevi Mazeh: Wise Observatory, Tel Aviv University

Nature, 2007, vol. 449, issue 7164, 872-875

Abstract: A black hole writ large It's important to try to work out the weight — or more properly the mass — of a distant stellar object because it plays such a large part in determining its behaviour. Black holes are of particular interest, but are not easy targets. The usual way of weighing a black hole is to determine its gravitational pull on a nearby object, and that has now been achieved for a black hole in the recently discovered binary system M 33 X-7, in the nearby galaxy Messier 33. At 15.7 solar masses, it is the most massive 'stellar-mass' black hole known. Its companion star is one of the most massive known stars, at around 70 solar masses, and M 33 X-7 is 16 times more distant than any other confirmed stellar black hole.

Date: 2007
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DOI: 10.1038/nature06218

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