A Black Hole With the Mass of a Galaxy (Today’s Most Popular)
Located in the Cancer constellation about 3.5 billion light years away, an object dubbed OJ287 is part of a binary black hole system and produces a huge amount of light, fact that is usually associated with the formation of a new galaxy. Quasars mostly consist of a massive black hole, surrounded by a large accretion disk spinning around it, and are powered by the massive amounts of matter falling towards the black hole at its center. Although compacted into objects with a small size, during the feeding process quasars release enough energy to outshine an entire galaxy.
OJ 287 has produced quasi-periodic optical outbursts going back approximately 100 years, as first apparent on photographic plates from 1891. Its central supermassive black hole is claimed to be the largest known, with a mass of 18 billion solar masses, more than six times the value calculated for the previous largest object.
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