New Scientist - October 17, 2007
A black hole as heavy as almost 16 Suns has set a new weight record for black holes that form from collapsing stars. Its discovery suggests that there may be even heavier ones lurking out there, spawned in the death throes of the universe's most massive stars.
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The companion star is itself a brute, some 70 times the Sun's mass. Jerome Orosz of San Diego State University in California and colleagues used the 8.2-metre Gemini North telescope at Mauna Kea, Hawaii, to work out the orbit precisely and pin down the black hole's mass (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature06218).
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