On January 15, 2025, researchers using the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton X-ray telescope announced the detection of a white dwarf star orbiting a supermassive black hole in the galaxy 1ES 1927+654, located approximately 270 million light-years from Earth.
This white dwarf, about 10% the mass of the Sun, is believed to be the closest object ever observed in such proximity to a black hole's event horizon. The study, led by MIT doctoral student Megan Masterson, indicates that the white dwarf is stabilizing its orbit rather than spiraling into the black hole.
The supermassive black hole at the galaxy's center has a mass roughly one million times that of the Sun, significantly less than the black hole at the Milky Way’s center, Sagittarius A*, which is about four times more massive.
Observations revealed that the white dwarf was producing increasingly frequent X-ray flashes as it approached the black hole. Initially, the flashes occurred every 18 minutes but decreased to seven minutes over two years before stabilizing.
The white dwarf's orbit is estimated to be about 5% of the distance from the Earth to the Sun, or just under 5 million miles (8 million km). Researchers hypothesize that material from the white dwarf's outer layers may be feeding into the black hole, providing a stabilizing effect that prevents it from crossing the event horizon.
Future observations from next-generation observatories, such as NASA's Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), may confirm the nature of this object and enhance our understanding of the dynamics near supermassive black holes.