Astronomers detect an 'enigmatic' CO-0.40-0.22 gas cloud

A team of astronomers at Keio University in Japan has found an enigmatic gas cloud, called CO-0.40-0.22, only 200 light years away from the center of the Milky Way.

Researchers from National Institute of Natural Sciences have found that this mysterious feature with two radios telescopes, the Nobeyama 45-m Telescope in Japan and the ASTE Telescope in Chile, are operated by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.

After conducting experiments, the study found that there are number of wide-velocity-dispersion compact clouds similar to CO-0.40-0.22.

Array

Lead author Oka said, most of the black holes are may be dark and very difficult to see directly at any wavelength and investigations of gas motion with radio telescopes may provide a complementary way to search for dark black holes.

The team proposes that some of those clouds might contain black holes.

The study suggested that there are 100 million black holes in the Milky Way Galaxy, but X-ray observations have only found dozens so far.

The study is published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.