Rare Type of Black Hole Snacks on Star
Science: NASA, ESA, CXC, Yi-Chi Chang (National Tsing Hua University); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory teamed up to identify a new possible example of a rare class of black holes, identified by X-ray emission (in purple) in this image released on July 24, 2025. Called NGC 6099 HLX-1, this bright X-ray source seems to reside in a compact star cluster in a giant elliptical galaxy. These rare black holes are called intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) and weigh between a few hundred to a few 100,000 times the mass of our Sun.
Learn more about IMBHs and what studying them can tell us about the universe.
Image credit: Science: NASA, ESA, CXC, Yi-Chi Chang (National Tsing Hua University); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)
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