Our Milky Way Galaxy is estimated to contain 100 million stellar black holes - cosmic bodies formed by the collapse of massive stars and so dense even light can't escape.
The team, headed by Professor LIU Jifeng of the National Astronomical Observatory of China of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC), spotted a stellar black hole with a mass 70 times greater than the Sun.
The monster black hole is located 15,000 light-years from Earth and has been named LB-1 by the researchers in a paper reported in the journal Nature.
STELLAR BLACK HOLES
Until just a few years ago, stellar black holes could only be discovered when they gobbled up gas from a companion star.
The vast majority of stellar black holes in our galaxy are not engaged in a cosmic banquet, though, and thus don't emit revealing X-rays
As a result, only about two dozen galactic stellar black holes have been well identified and measured.
To counter this limitation, LIU and collaborators surveyed the sky with China's Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST).