VFTS 243 (2MASS J05380840-6909190) is an O7V type main sequence

star A star is a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by Self-gravitation, self-gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night sk ...

that orbits a stellar mass

black hole A black hole is a massive, compact astronomical object so dense that its gravity prevents anything from escaping, even light. Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass will form a black hole. Th ...

. The black hole is around nine times the mass of the

Sun The Sun is the star at the centre of the Solar System. It is a massive, nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core, radiating the energy from its surface mainly as visible light a ...

, with the blue star being 25 times the mass of the Sun making the star 200,000 times larger than the black hole. VFTS 243 is located in the

Large Magellanic Cloud The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is a dwarf galaxy and satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. At a distance of around , the LMC is the second- or third-closest galaxy to the Milky Way, after the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy, Sagittarius Dwarf ...

inside

NGC 2070 NGC 2070 (also known as Caldwell 103) is a large open cluster and candidate super star cluster forming the heart of the bright region in the centre-south-east of the Large Magellanic Cloud. This cluster was discovered by French astronomer Nicolas ...

(the

Tarantula Nebula The Tarantula Nebula (also known as 30 Doradus) is a large H II region in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), forming its south-east corner (from Earth, Earth's perspective). Discovery The Tarantula Nebula was observed by Nicolas-Louis de Lacaill ...

) around 160,000 light years from

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to Planetary habitability, harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all ...

. The binary has an orbital period of 10.4 days.

References

O-type main-sequence stars Stellar black holes Dorado Binary stars Stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud {{main-star-stub