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Only a few of the dozen or so stellar-mass black holes have been observedaway from the plane of the Galaxy$^1$. Those few could have been ejected fromthe plane as a result of a ``kick'' received during a supernova explosion, orthey could be remnants of the population of massive stars formed in the earlystages of evolution of the Galaxy. Determining their orbital motion should helpto distinguish between these options. Here we report the transverse motion (inthe plane of the sky) for the black hole X-ray nova XTE J1118+480 (refs 2-5),from which we derive a large space velocity. This X-ray binary has an eccentricorbit around the Galactic Centre, like most objects in the halo of the Galaxy,such as ancient stars and globular clusters. The properties of the systemsuggest that its age is comparable to or greater than the age of the Galacticdisk. Only an extraordinary ``kick'' from a supernova could have launched theblack hole into an orbit like this from a birth place in the disk of theGalaxy.

A high-velocity black hole on a Galactic-halo orbit in the solar neighbourhood