Hubble discovers first of star cluster's missing black holes

The massive globular star cluster Omega Centauri has puzzled astronomers for decades.

It should be filled with black holes left behind by exploding stars, yet evidence for them is scarce.

Now, astronomers using archival data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and supporting observations from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope have finally located the first stellar-mass black hole in this cluster.

Discovering the first of this missing black hole population will help refine current theories on black hole formation within environments such as Omega Centauri.

The team's findings were published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. ...