The Hubble and Chandra space telescopes have gone “fishing” for an elusive class of black holes that falls between stellar-mass black holes and monster supermassive black holes. Found only in the cores of galaxies, intermediate-mass black holes (IMBH) weigh in at hundreds or thousands of times the mass of our sun.
Astronomers found an example of this “missing link” inside the elliptical galaxy NGC 6099. IMBHs are stealthy and must be caught in the act of foraging. When they occasionally devour a hapless bypassing star—in what astronomers call a tidal disruption event—they pour out a gusher of radiation. Such bright X-ray and visible light sources are extremely rare and can serve as a key probe for identifying the elusive black holes: https://bit.ly/3TNAEqw
