• Question: how large is the largest blackhole discovered and how close is it to the earth?

    Asked by Arianna to Maggie, Ry on 17 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Ry Cutter

      Ry Cutter answered on 17 Nov 2017:

      The largest known black hole is NGC1277 it’s about 250 million lightyears away!
      It weighs between 17 billion and 30 billion times the mass of the Sun!
      It’s an important blackhole because it weighs a significant fraction of it’s galaxy. We don’t know where all it’s stars have gone!
      Great question,
      Ryan

    • Photo: Maggie Lieu

      Maggie Lieu answered on 17 Nov 2017:

      The biggest black holes live in the centre of galaxies. These are called supermassive black holes. So in the centre of our galaxy ‘the Milky way’ there is a super massive blackhole.

      Now bigger galaxies, have bigger super massive black holes at the centre. The biggest blackhole we think so far is called TON618 and its 10billion times heavier than our sun!

Comments