First ever detected black hole is massive than we know

New Delhi : A new observation by the researchers have left them baffled to the fact that all that they knew about first ever detected black hole was not apt.

According to a report published in the journal Science, the system known as Cygnus X-1 contains the most massive stellar-mass black hole and it was discovered without using the gravitational waves.

The aforementioned black hole is the closest to Earth. It was discovered in 1964.

In a latest, an international team of astronomers used the Very Long Baseline Array—a continent-sized radio telescope made up of 10 dishes spread across the United States—together with a clever technique to measure distances in space.

If we see an object from different places, its distance can be measured in a more apt way.

"If you hold your finger out in front of your eyes and view it with one eye at a time, you'll notice your finger appears to jump from one spot to another. It's exactly the same principle."

"Over six days we observed a full orbit of the black hole and used observations taken of the same system with the same telescope array in 2011," Professor Miller-Jones said. "This method and our new measurements show the system is further away than previously thought, with a black hole that's significantly more massive."

Next year, the world's biggest radio telescope—the Square Kilometre Array (SKA)—will begin construction in Australia and South Africa.

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