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Artist’s Concept of Giant Black Hole in Center of Ultracompact Galaxy
This is an illustration of a supermassive black hole, weighing as much as 21 million suns, located in the middle of the ultradense galaxy M60-UCD1. The dwarf galaxy is so dense that millions of stars fill the sky as seen by an imaginary visitor. Because no light can escape from the black hole, it appears simply in silhouette against the starry background. The black hole's intense gravitational field warps the light of the background stars to form ring-like images just outside the dark edges of the black hole's event horizon. Combined observations by the Hubble Space Telescope and Gemini North telescope determined the presence of the black hole inside such a small and dense galaxy.
- Release DateSeptember 17, 2014
- Science ReleaseHubble Helps Find Smallest Known Galaxy with a Supermassive Black Hole
- Credit
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Dwarf Galaxy Near M60
Looking almost like a bright star near the massive elliptical galaxy M60 (also called NGC 4649), the dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1 crams 140 million stars within a diameter of about 300 light-years. The dwarf galaxy may actually be the stripped remnant of a larger galaxy that was torn...
Elliptical Galaxy M60
This is a Hubble Space Telescope image of the massive elliptical galaxy M60. The galaxy lies about 50 million light-years away inside the immense Virgo Cluster of 2,500 galaxies. A portion of the faint bluish spiral galaxy NGC 4647 can be seen in the upper right corner of this...
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Last Updated
Aug 17, 2025
Contact
Media
Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, Maryland
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
