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A high-velocity black hole on a Galactic-halo orbit in the solar neighbourhood

Nature volume 413, pages 139–141 (2001)Cite this article

Abstract

Only a few of the dozen or so known stellar-mass black holes have been observed away from the plane of the Galaxy1. Those few could have been ejected from the plane as a result of a ‘kick’ received during a supernova explosion, or they could be remnants of the population of massive stars formed in the early stages of evolution of the Galaxy. Determining their orbital motion should help to distinguish between these options. Here we report the transverse motion (in the plane of the sky) for the black-hole X-ray nova XTE J1118+480 (refs 2, 3, 4, 5), from which we derive a large space velocity. This X-ray binary system has an eccentric orbit around the Galactic Centre, like most objects in the halo of the Galaxy, such as ancient stars and globular clusters. The properties of the system suggest that its age is comparable to or greater than the age of the Galactic disk. Only an extraordinary ‘kick’ from a supernova could have launched the black hole into an orbit like this from a birthplace in the disk of the Galaxy.

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Figure 1: Proper motion of XTE J1118+480, observed with the VLBA on 4 May–24 July 2000.
Figure 2: Galactic orbit of XTE J1118+480 (blue curve) during the last orbital period of the Sun around the Galactic Centre (240 Myr).

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Acknowledgements

We thank G. Pooley for information on the fluxes observed with the Ryle telescope, A. Spagna for providing his astrometric software for the optical measurements, and R. Fernández for help with software programming. I.F.M. thanks J. Paul, J.-P. Zahn, R. M. Wagner, G. Israelian, R. Rebolo, E. Ergma and A. King for helpful comments and discussions. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. The Guide Star Catalogue-II is a joint project of the Space Telescope Science Institute and the Osservatorio Astronomico di Torino with additional support provided by the European Southern Observatory, Space Telescope European Coordinating Facility, the International GEMINI project and the European Space Agency Astrophysics Division. I.F.M. is a member of the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas of Argentina, and I.R. is a Fellow of the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Technológico of Brazil.

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Author notes

  1. I. F. Mirabel, V. Dhawan and F. Guglielmetti: These authors contributed equally to this work

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Service d'Astrophysique/CEA, CE-Saclay, Gif/Yvette, 91191, France

    I. F. Mirabel & I. Rodrigues

  2. Instituto de Astronomía y Física del Espacio, cc5, Buenos Aires, 1428, Argentina

    I. F. Mirabel

  3. National Radio Astronomy Observatory, PO Box 0, Socorro, 87801, New Mexico, USA

    V. Dhawan

  4. European Southern Observatory, Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2, Garching bei Munchen, DE-85740, Germany

    R. P. Mignani

  5. Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, 21218, Maryland, USA

    F. Guglielmetti

Authors
  1. I. F. Mirabel
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  2. V. Dhawan
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  3. R. P. Mignani
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  4. I. Rodrigues
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  5. F. Guglielmetti
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Correspondence to I. F. Mirabel.

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Mirabel, I., Dhawan, V., Mignani, R. et al. A high-velocity black hole on a Galactic-halo orbit in the solar neighbourhood. Nature 413, 139–141 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/35093060

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