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A 15.65-solar-mass black hole in an eclipsing binary in the nearby spiral galaxy M 33

Nature volume 449, pages 872–875 (2007)Cite this article

Abstract

Stellar-mass black holes are found in X-ray-emitting binary systems, where their mass can be determined from the dynamics of their companion stars1,2,3. Models of stellar evolution have difficulty producing black holes in close binaries with masses more than ten times that of the Sun (>10; ref. 4), which is consistent with the fact that the most massive stellar black holes known so far2,3 all have masses within one standard deviation of 10. Here we report a mass of (15.65 ± 1.45) for the black hole in the recently discovered system M 33 X-7, which is located in the nearby galaxy Messier 33 (M 33) and is the only known black hole that is in an eclipsing binary5. To produce such a massive black hole, the progenitor star must have retained much of its outer envelope until after helium fusion in the core was completed4. On the other hand, in order for the black hole to be in its present 3.45-day orbit about its (70.0 ± 6.9) companion, there must have been a ‘common envelope’ phase of evolution in which a significant amount of mass was lost from the system6. We find that the common envelope phase could not have occurred in M 33 X-7 unless the amount of mass lost from the progenitor during its evolution was an order of magnitude less than what is usually assumed in evolutionary models of massive stars7,8,9.

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Figure 1: Mean optical spectrum of M 33 X-7.
Figure 2: Phased X-ray light curve and radial velocity curve for M 33 X-7.
Figure 3: Optical light curves.
Figure 4: Schematic diagram of M 33 X-7.

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Acknowledgements

We thank J. Walsh for help with the SPECRES software, I. Hubeny for the use of his model atmosphere codes, and T. Matheson for support with the Gemini Observations. C.D.B. acknowledges support from the US National Science Foundation.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Astronomy, San Diego State University, 5500 Campanile Drive, San Diego, California 92182-1221, USA,

    Jerome A. Orosz

  2. Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA ,

    Jeffrey E. McClintock, Ramesh Narayan, Joel D. Hartman & Jiefeng Liu

  3. Department of Astronomy, Yale University, PO Box 208101, New Haven, Connecticut 06520-8101, USA,

    Charles D. Bailyn

  4. National Optical Astronomy Observatory, 950 North Cherry Avenue, Tucson, Arizona 85719, USA ,

    Lucas Macri

  5. Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik, Giessenbachstraße, D-85741 Garching, Germany ,

    Wolfgang Pietsch

  6. MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, 37-287, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA ,

    Ronald A. Remillard

  7. Wise Observatory, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel

    Avi Shporer & Tsevi Mazeh

Authors
  1. Jerome A. Orosz
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Correspondence to Jerome A. Orosz.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

The file contains Supplementary Notes with additional references, Supplementary Figures 1-5 with Legends and a Supplementary Table 1. (PDF 2497 kb)

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Orosz, J., McClintock, J., Narayan, R. et al. A 15.65-solar-mass black hole in an eclipsing binary in the nearby spiral galaxy M 33. Nature 449, 872–875 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature06218

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