Artist’s animation of VFTS 243

This animation shows what the binary system VFTS 243 might look like if we were observing it up close and at an inclination different from that we see from Earth. The system is composed of a hot, blue star with 25 times the Sun’s mass and a black hole, which is at least nine times the mass of the Sun. The sizes of the two binary components are not to scale: in reality, the blue star is about 200 000 times larger than the black hole.