‘The Unicorn’: One of the smallest and closest black holes to Earth.

Scientists have discovered one of the smallest black holes in our galaxy and the closest one to Earth and have named it “the Unicorn.”

Astronomers found the Unicorn approximately 1,500 light years away and gave it that nickname because of its rarity and its discovery amongst the Monoceros constellation, according to a release from Ohio State University. Monoceros is Greek for unicorn.

The findings, published in the April edition of journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, outlines how the Unicorn is about three times the mass of our sun, considered small for a black hole, and appears to be the companion to a red giant star. “Companion” means the two are connected by gravity.The red giant star the Unicorn is the companion of was previously well-documented by telescopes run by Ohio State and NASA, but its data had not been analyzed thoroughly,

Just as the moon’s gravity distorts the Earth’s oceans, causing the seas to bulge toward and away from the moon, producing high tides, so does the black hole distort the star into a football-like shape with one axis longer than the other,” conveyed by Todd Thompson, co-author of the study and chair of Ohio State’s astronomy department,Studying black holes and neutron stars allows scientists to learn more about the way stars form and die.

A Black Hole is a region in space where the gravity pull is so high. The gravitational pull is so strong that even light cannot get out. The gravity pull in the region is so strong as the matter has been squeezed into a tiny space. This usually happens when a star is dying.