Question

Kepler’s third law can be used not only to determine the mass of the Sun and planets but also distant and exotic objects, like black holes, binary stars, and galaxies. Astronomers find a star orbiting a black hole. The star is 0.32 AU from the black hole and requires 19 days to orbit that black hole. What is the black hole’s mass in solar masses?

6.15

12.11

0.0168

9.078e-5 (9.078×10^-5 or 0.00009078)

0.396

118.3

727.5

Answer 1