News Astronomy

A celestial loner might be the first known rogue black hole

Detected by gravitational lensing, the interstellar wanderer may be a hefty neutron star instead

illustration of an isolated stellar-mass black hole

A hefty but compact object in our galaxy might be the first known isolated stellar-mass black hole (one illustrated), or it might be a heavy neutron star.

NASA and G. Bacon/STScI

By Katherine Kornei

- More than 2 years ago

Read another version of this article at Science News Explores

A solitary celestial object — more massive than the sun, yet far smaller — is wandering the galaxy a few thousand light-years from Earth.