The newly discovered stellar black hole in the Milky Way is 33 solar masses. Gaia BH3 is thought to have formed when a massive star collapsed.
It is only about 2,000 light-years away from Earth. The black hole was discovered by the wobbling motion of a companion star. It is currently the largest known stellar black hole in our galaxy. The European Space Agency's "Gaia" mission measured the movement of the companion star over several years and came across the black hole. The companion star may have been composed of very few heavy elements or metals before its collapse. This means that so-called metal-poor stars lose so much mass. The discovery was made by the Observatoire de Paris in Paris and the ESO's Very Large Telescope in Chile. It was made using data from the Esa mission "Gaia" and other telescopes in Chile and Spain. The study was published in the journal "Astronomy and Astrophysics" by the Leiden University in Germany.