A "black hole triple" system has been discovered for the first time, scientists announced.

Black holes have only been spotted on their own or in a binary until this discovery, with a single star, neutron star or other black hole companion orbiting tightly around them.

Now, according to a new paper in the journal Nature, the black hole V404 Cygnus has two stars orbiting around it at varying distances.

This first-of-its-kind discovery could help unravel the mysteries of how black holes form and how they enter into binaries or triples, researchers said........

A group of international researchers have discovered a binary star orbiting near a supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy, the Milky Way.

The study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications, was based on data collected by the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ESO's VLT).

Researchers said their discovery was the first time a stellar pair had been found near a supermassive black hole.

"Black holes are not as destructive as we thought," lead author Florian Peißker from the University of Cologne said.

The 'D9' binary star forms in harsh conditions

A binary star is a system of two stars orbiting around a common centre of mass, leaving them bound together by the force of gravity.

Their existence is quite common in the universe.

However, researchers said that before their discovery, binary stars had never been found near a supermassive black hole because the intense gravity could make stellar systems unstable.

For years, scientists believed that the extreme conditions near a supermassive black hole would prevent new stars from forming.

But the newly discovered binary star orbiting Sagittarius A* has shown that stars can form even in those environments........

A black hole might conjure images of a dark, quiet void — but astronomers now have the footage to show otherwise.

In fact, the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy looks more like a fireworks display.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has captured the most detailed view into the Milky Way's galactic centre yet, and it's shown that the black hole constantly emits dazzling flares.

Some of these explosive flares take months to fade away, while others are over in 20 seconds.

There may be flares that flicker even faster than that, according to Mark Wardle, an astrophysicist at Macquarie University, and co-author of a study unveiling the flares in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

"It just seems to keep on going. We haven't yet found the smallest timescale on which [the flares are emitted]," he said.......