First dormant black hole found outside the Milky Way

An artist’s impression showing what the binary star system VFTS243 – containing a black hole and a large luminous star orbiting each other – might look like if observed from close range. Photograph: European Southern Observatory/Reuters

A dormant black hole nine times the mass of the Sun has been found outside the Milky Way for the first time, in what researchers have called a “very exciting discovery”.

Though it is not the first contender, a researcher from the University of Sheffield says this black hole is “the first to be unambiguously detected outside our galaxy”.