Black Hole & Companion Star Poster

In this artist’s portrayal of the IC 10 X-1 system, the black hole lies at the upper left and its companion star is on the right. The two objects orbit around a center of gravity once every 34.4 hours. The stellar companion is a type known as a Wolf-Rayet star. Such stars are highly evolved and destined to explode as supernovae. The black hole companion is shedding its outer envelope in a powerful wind, and some of this gas is captured by the black hole’s powerful gravity. But in the case of black holes that form when their parent stars explode as a supernova, a record established less than two weeks ago has just been shattered. Black holes are objects with such strong gravity that nothing, not even light, can escape their grasp. On October 17, astronomers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory announced that a black hole in the galaxy M33 contains 16 times the mass of the Sun. For two weeks it was the heaviest known black hole of its type. Such black holes are known as "stellar-mass" black holes, because they have masses typical of stars. Credit: Aurore Simonnet/Sonoma State University/NASA.