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

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.

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Correspondence to Jerome A. Orosz.

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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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