Hubble Helps Find Smallest Known Galaxy with a Supermassive Black Hole

September 17, 2014 1:00PM (EDT)Release ID: 2014-41
Hubble Helps Find Smallest Known Galaxy with a Supermassive Black Hole

Summary

Astronomers have found an unlikely object in an improbable place: a monster black hole lurking inside one of the tiniest galaxies known. The dwarf galaxy containing the black hole is the densest galaxy ever seen, cramming 140 million stars within a diameter of about 300 light-years (just 1/500th of our Milky Way galaxy's diameter). However, the black hole inside the galaxy is five times the mass of the black hole at the center of our Milky Way. This suggests that the dwarf galaxy may actually be the stripped remnant of a larger galaxy that was torn apart during a close encounter with a more massive galaxy. The finding implies that there are many other compact galaxies in the universe that contain supermassive black holes.

Full Article

Astronomers have found an unlikely object in an improbable place: a monster black hole lurking inside one of the tiniest galaxies known. Though the black hole is five times the mass of the black hole at the center of our Milky Way, it is inside a galaxy that crams 140 million stars within a diameter of about 300 light-years, only 1/500th of our galaxy's diameter. The dwarf galaxy containing the black hole, called M60-UCD1, is the densest galaxy ever seen. If you lived inside of it, the night sky would dazzle with at least 1 million stars visible to the naked eye (as opposed to 4,000 stars in ...

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