Watch free video Zoom In onto a Black Hole (NGC 300 X-1)

Astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) have detected a stellar-mass black hole much further away than any other previously known. With a mass twenty times that of the Sun, this is also the second most massive stellar mass black hole ever found. The newly announced black hole lies in a spiral galaxy called NGC 300, six million light-years from Earth. This video zooms in onto the position of the system containing the stellar-mass black hole, and finishes with an artist’s impression of the system.

Date 27 January 2010