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Star Orbiting Black Hole Animation

The precise data collected by NASA’s Hubble and James Webb space telescopes enabled a team of astronomers to chart the visible star’s orbital path over a 20 year-plus period. Researchers recorded this segment of the star’s orbit during its closest approach to its stellar-mass black hole companion, oMEGACat BH-2.

Based on the timespan covered by the Hubble-Webb dataset, the team calculated the remainder of the visible star’s orbital path and found that it orbits oMEGACat BH-2 once every 94 years. This makes it the longest-period black hole binary ever known and gives a clue to the pair’s origin. The duo probably formed dynamically, meaning the visible star and its stellar-mass black hole companion found each other in the crowded globular star cluster Omega Centauri.

  • Release Date
    July 13, 2026
  • Science Release
    NASA’s Hubble Discovers First of Star Cluster’s Missing Black Holes
    Read the release
  • Credit
    Animation: NASA, ESA, Matthew Whitaker (U of Utah), Joseph Olmsted (STScI)

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  • Video: Full res, 3840 × 2160, 60 FPS
    mp4 (2.61 MB)

Related Images & Videos

A Hubble image of globular star cluster Omega Centauri, which looks like a dense field of stars. Some stars appear a bit larger and brighter than others; most appear blue, orange, or yellow. The colors appear uniformly distributed, like grains of sand. Stars toward the clusteru2019s center are packed closer together, creating a more luminous area at the globular clusteru2019s core. A small red square frame is superimposed on the cluster near the imageu2019s center. It connects to a square pullout in the top-right corner, which shows the outlined area in greater detail. Among the blue- and orange-colored stars is small blue-white dot highlighted by a small red circle.

Omega Centauri Context Image

Astronomers found Omega Centauri’s first stellar-mass black hole, which has a visible star companion that is shown in greater detail. They used 20-plus years of data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and recent data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to make the discovery.

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Details

Last Updated
Jul 13, 2026
Location
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Contact
Media

Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, Maryland
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov

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