First dormant black hole found outside the galaxy, astronomers say

(CNN) – European astronomers have found a mysterious type of black hole outside the Milky Way for the first time.

It’s called a dormant stellar-mass black hole, and it was discovered in a neighboring galaxy.

The black hole is actually the small spot seen in the image. The big blue mass is a star with about 25 times the sun’s mass the black hole is orbiting.

One of the things that makes these black holes different from the traditional type is that they don’t emit high levels of X-ray radiation, which makes them difficult to detect.

Scientists had to make a series of calculations from observations made by the European Southern Observatory’s very large telescope to find it.

This black hole has at least nine times the mass of our sun.

Dormant stellar-mass black holes like it are thought to be fairly common.

News of the discovery was published in the scientific journal Nature Astronomy on Monday.

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