The ultra massive black hole | Abell 1201 galaxy cluster

 The ultra massive black hole | Abell 1201 galaxy cluster

Astronomers just discovered what may be the largest black hole known to date.

The massive black hole has a mass of Thirty Billion Suns and staying at the center of a galaxy located hundreds of millions of light-years from Earth. Astronomers call that cosmic monster an ultra-massive black hole. Generally, the mass of the galactic supermassive black holes varies between a few million to a few billion solar masses. 

Astronomers found out the black hole during observations of a galaxy located beyond from the Earth than the one centered around the giant black hole, while using the gravity of the center galaxy to enlarge the circumstantial object. When gravity bend the light around the huge object in space, that effect is known as gravitational lensing. Gravitational lensing is like natural own telescope which helps astronomers to increase the magnifying capabilities of objects which have large distance to be properly observable to human-made telescopes.

Astronomers discovered the largest black hole ever seen. (Image credit: ESA/Hubble, Digitized Sky Survey, Nick Risinger (skysurvey.org), N. Bartmann)

The black hole, located in one of the galaxies of the Abell 1201 galaxy cluster. Although enormous, the black hole is not very active, meaning it is not swallowing excessively material and therefore it is not producing strong X-ray radiation. Such black holes are almost impossible to study by other approaches.

The astronomers calculated the size of the black hole by scrutinizing the magnification of the forefront object in a sequence of pictures taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. The scientists were able to simulate how much light bends around the forefront galaxy where the black hole exist in Using sophisticated computer modeling. Before arriving at a solution, they tested thousands of black hole sizes that harmonized the observations. 

James Nightingale, an astrophysicist at Durham University in the U.K. said in his statement that this particular black hole is one of the biggest ever observed and on the higher limit of how huge we believe black holes can tentatively become, so it is an tremendously startling detection.