Pith. sign in

REVIEW 2 cited by

A Search for Wandering Black Holes in the Milky Way with Gaia and DECaLS

Not yet reviewed by Pith; the record is open.

Re-run · record.json Download PDF Read on arXiv ↗

This paper has not been read by Pith yet. Machine review is queued; the pith claim, tier, and objections will appear here once it completes.

SPECIMEN: schema-true, not a live event

T0 review · schema-true

One-sentence machine reading of the paper's core claim.

pith:XXXXXXXX · record.json · timestamp

arxiv 2105.04581 v1 pith:KRXV5BJA submitted 2021-05-10 astro-ph.GA

A Search for Wandering Black Holes in the Milky Way with Gaia and DECaLS

Jenny E. Greene , Lachlan Lancaster , Yuan-Sen Ting , Sergey E. Koposov , Shany Danieli , Song Huang , Fangzhou Jiang , Johnny P. Greco
show 1 more author
Jay Strader
This is my paper
classification astro-ph.GA
keywords blackclustersholesmilkysearchconstraintsdecalsexpected
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
0 comments
read the original abstract

We present a search for "hyper-compact" star clusters in the Milky Way using a combination of Gaia and the Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey (DECaLS). Such putative clusters, with sizes of ~1 pc and containing 500-5000 stars, are expected to remain bound to intermediate-mass black holes (Mbh~10^3-10^5 M-sun) that may be accreted into the Milky Way halo within dwarf satellites. Using the semi-analytic model SatGen we find an expected ~100 wandering intermediate-mass black holes with if every infalling satellite hosts a black hole. We do not find any such clusters in our search. Our upper limits rule out 100% occupancy, but do not put stringent constraints on the occupation fraction. Of course, we need stronger constraints on the properties of the putative star clusters, including their assumed sizes as well as the fraction of stars that would be compact remnants.

discussion (0)

Sign in with ORCID, Apple, or X to comment. Anyone can read and Pith papers without signing in.

Forward citations

Cited by 2 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

  1. Predicting intermediate-mass black hole formation in star clusters with machine learning

    astro-ph.GA 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 7.0

    Machine learning regressors trained on Rapster simulations forecast that globular clusters rarely host black holes above 100 solar masses while a few nuclear star clusters may exceed this threshold.

  2. Tracing black hole and galaxy growth across environments since cosmic noon

    astro-ph.GA 2026-07 accept novelty 6.5

    Central black holes in ASTRID and TNG300 follow a tight, redshift-invariant M_BH–M_⋆ relation from z=2 to 0.5; departures mark merger-driven high-mass quenchers, tidally stripped overmassive satellites, and undermassi...