Until now, the black hole has been obscured from our view, clouded by dust and gas in Mrk 462. In a larger galaxy, scientists might be able to find a black hole by observing stars moving rapidly at a galaxy's center , but that wouldn't be possible in a galaxy this small. Instead, the team was able to use Chandra to see the glowing X-rays being emitted from gas being sucked into the black hole.
"Because buried black holes are even harder to detect than exposed ones, finding this example might mean there are a lot more dwarf galaxies out there with similar black holes," study co-lead Ryan Hickox, also a researcher at Dartmouth, said in the same statement.
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