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NASA’s Hubble Discovers First of Star Cluster’s Missing Black Holes

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July 13, 2026 10:00AM (EDT)Release ID: 2026-017
A Hubble image of globular star cluster Omega Centauri, which looks like a dense field of stars. Some stars appear a bit larger and brighter than others; most appear blue, orange, or yellow. The colors appear uniformly distributed, like grains of sand. Stars toward the cluster’s center are packed closer together, creating a more luminous area at the globular cluster’s core.

Summary

Call it the case of the missing black holes.

While models suggest globular star cluster Omega Centauri should contain about 10,000 stellar-mass black holes, none have been detected yet.

Recently a team of astronomers located the first stellar-mass black hole in Omega Centauri as it is orbited by a lower-mass visible star. By tracking this star's motion on the sky using hundreds of images taken over 20 years by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and more recent images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, they were able to weigh the unseen companion and determine it is indeed a black hole. However, its long period and low mass were surprising for a black hole in this massive star cluster.

Full Article

The massive globular star cluster Omega Centauri has puzzled astronomers for decades. It should be filled with black holes left behind by exploding stars, yet evidence for them is scarce. Now, astronomers using archival data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and supportive observations from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have finally located their first stellar-mass black hole in this cluster. Discovering the first of this missing black hole population will help refine current theories on black hole formation within environments such as Omega Centauri. The team’s findings ...

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News releases highlighting the discoveries of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope are produced for NASA by the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, under NASA Contract NAS5-26555. News release content is developed by the News Team in STScI’s Office of Public Outreach.

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