and in our galaxy too.
(artist's rendering)
http://news.yahoo.co..._blackhole_dc_2
Shaposhnikov and his Goddard colleague Lev Titarchuk used NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer satellite and a new method to estimate the size of the black hole, found in a system in the southern constellation Ara, in our own Milky Way Galaxy.
It measures the oscillation of hot gas piling up near the black hole as it sucks in matter, they told a meeting in Los Angeles of the American Astronomical Society High-Energy Astrophysics Division.
The new black hole has a mass of 3.8 Suns and would be about 15 miles across, they estimate. "This makes the black hole one of the smallest objects ever discovered outside our solar system," Shaposhnikov said.
The smallest black hole previously identified was GRO 1655-40, with a mass of about 6.3 Suns
