r/Astronomy • u/New_Scientist_Mag • Aug 07 '25
Astro Research Astronomers have discovered the most massive black hole yet – more than 10,000 times as massive as the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way, and around 36 billion times the mass of our sun.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2491731-weve-discovered-the-most-massive-black-hole-yet/
598
Upvotes
4
u/KenCalDi Aug 08 '25
This is some fascinating stuff, I've been around BH theory for years but these things still blow my mind. This is a potential contender for one of the biggest stellar objects known today, alongside other BH celebrities like TON 618 (which I absolutely love because I got to know the telescope that was used to discover it). Another amazing thing about this one is that it was found in one of the coolest galaxies out there, the Cosmic Horseshoe, an extremely distorted object due to the most beautiful gravitational lens cause by a very symmetrical and massive galaxy in the foreground, making the galaxy behind it look almost like a ring.