The first-ever medium-sized black hole - falling in the in-between category of the thus far discovered super-huge or small black holes - has been discovered by the researchers at the Centre d’Etude Spatiale des Rayonnements in France. The ‘middling’ hole was detected by the French scientists in a galaxy that is nearly 290 million light-years from Earth.

The research, published in the journal Nature, said that the newfound ‘extraordinarily bright’ object – which has been named HLX-1 - is “the best candidate yet” for the proposed intermediate-mass black hole category. Astrophysicists said that the new black hole, with a mass nearly 500 times that of the Sun, is neither too heavy nor too light.

Going by the perception of the scientists, HLX-1 “just right” to fit in the ‘middling’ category – while the mass of the small, stellar-mass black holes is 20-30 times the mass of the Sun; the super-massive black holes weigh millions to billions times more than the Sun.

In an email, lead scientist Sean Farrell, of the French astronomy center, said: “Where our object stands out is that it is about ten times brighter than the previous record holder” among the so-called ‘middleweight’ objects.

However, confirming any of the known middleweight objects is a significant challenge, more so due to the black hole’s extraordinary brightness and its distance from the Earth.