UWM Panther Pride Now Stretches 9 Quadrillion Miles
The closest black hole to Earth becomes the official UWM star.
International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/J. da Silva/Spaceengine/M. Zamani, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
UW-Milwaukee is looking deep into space, some 1,560 light-years away, for its new symbol of Panther pride.
UWM is designating Gaia Black Hole 1, a binary star system containing the closest known black hole to Earth, as the university’s official star.
The system, known as Gaia BH1, includes a sunlike star orbiting a black hole. UWM says the pairing is particularly fitting: The visible star is gold, matching one of the university’s colors, while the black hole represents a field in which UWM researchers have gained international recognition.
Chancellor Thomas Gibson signed a proclamation naming Gaia BH1 the “UWM Star.” The proclamation will be read during a public talk about black hole discovery at 7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 10, at the Lubar Entrepreneurship Center on the UW-Milwaukee campus.
In a press release, the university credited the idea to its Astronomy Club.
Gaia BH1 was identified in 2022 by two independent teams of researchers. One team included UWM physics and astronomy professor Philip Chang.
Located in the constellation Ophiuchus, located about 1,560 light-years from Earth, the star is too faint to see with the naked eye, but can be observed using a telescope. The black hole itself cannot be directly seen because black holes do not emit or reflect light.
University researchers participate in several major international scientific collaborations, including the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, better known as LIGO, and the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves, or NANOGrav. Both study gravitational waves generated by astrophysical objects, including black holes.
UWM researchers also participate in the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration, which produced the first image of a black hole in 2019.
The university says its newly designated star is intended to symbolize both its scientific research and its aspirations for students — with a celestial twist on the familiar advice to keep reaching for the stars.
UW-Madison researchers have to date named several items, including a minor planet and an asteroid.
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