A black hole detected in the young massive LMC cluster NGC 1850
We report on the detection of a black hole (NGC 1850 BH1) in the ∼100-Myr-old massive cluster NGC 1850 in the Large Magellanic Cloud. It is in a binary system with a main-sequence turn-off star (4.9 ± 0.4 M·), which is starting to fill its Roche lobe and is becoming distorted. Using 17 epochs of Ver...
| Autores: | , , , , , , , , , , |
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| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2021 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) |
| Repositorio: | DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:digital.csic.es:10261/275847 |
| Acceso en línea: | http://hdl.handle.net/10261/275847 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Techniques: imaging spectroscopy Techniques: radial velocities Binaries: spectroscopic Globular clusters: individual: NGC 1850 Galaxies: photometry |
| Sumario: | We report on the detection of a black hole (NGC 1850 BH1) in the ∼100-Myr-old massive cluster NGC 1850 in the Large Magellanic Cloud. It is in a binary system with a main-sequence turn-off star (4.9 ± 0.4 M·), which is starting to fill its Roche lobe and is becoming distorted. Using 17 epochs of Very Large Telescope/Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer observations, we detected radial velocity variations exceeding 300 km s-1 associated with the target star, linked to the ellipsoidal variations measured by the fourth phase of the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment in the optical bands. Under the assumption of a semidetached system, the simultaneous modelling of radial velocity and light curves constrains the orbital inclination of the binary to 38° ± 2°, resulting in a true mass of the unseen companion of 11.1 -2.4+2.1\M⊙. This represents the first direct dynamical detection of a black hole in a young massive cluster, opening up the possibility of studying the initial mass function and the early dynamical evolution of such compact objects in high-density environments. |
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