There is indeed a supermassive black hole in the galaxy Abell 1201. In this respect informs Royal Astronomical Society.
Supermassive black holes have masses between one million and one trillion solar masses and are found at the centers of large galaxies. Including in the Milky Way is the Sagittarius A* black hole that was directly imaged by astronomers a few years ago. Such objects play a decisive role in the evolution of galaxies, and therefore the attention of scientists is drawn to them.
Now, such an object with a mass of more than 30 billion times the Sun has been discovered in the galaxy Abell 1201, 2.7 billion light-years from Earth. The data were obtained using gravitational lensing: large objects refract light and can act as a giant “magnifying glass”, magnifying more distant objects behind them.
“About 30 billion times larger than our sun, this black hole is one of the largest space objects ever discovered. In terms of mass, it’s close to the upper limit of how big black holes can theoretically be in our imagination, so this is an extremely exciting event,” principal investigator James Nightingale told Sky News.
The authors hope that this is only the first step towards a deeper understanding of the mysteries of black holes, and that future large telescopes will help astronomers study even more distant black holes.