Manas Vichare Pune India

Supermassive and Stellar Black Holes

- What are black holes?

A black hole is a region of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing—no particles or even electromagnetic radiation such as light—can escape from it. The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass can deform spacetime to form a black hole. Black holes are a class of astronomical object that have undergone gravitational collapse, leaving behind spheroidal regions of space from which nothing can escape, not even light.  1) Supermassive Black Holes- A supermassive black hole is the largest type of black hole, containing a mass of the order of hundreds of thousands to billions of times the mass of the Sun.  Location- They are usually Located at the centre of various galaxies. Eg - Sagittarius A* is a Supermassive Black hole located at the centre of our Milky Way Galaxy.  - The first direct image taken of a Suppermassive Black hole of the M87 (Messier Object) Galaxy. - It shows accretion ring orbiting the object at a mean seperation of 350 AU 2) Stellar Black Holes  Stellar Black Holes- A stellar black hole is a black hole formed by the gravitational collapse of a star. They have masses ranging from about 5 to several tens of solar masses. The process is observed as a hypernova explosion or as a gamma ray burst. These black holes are also referred to as collapsars.