Type

Supermassive

Location

in the constellation Ursa Major

Finder Chart

Distance

120 million light-years

Mass

23 million times the mass of the Sun

Size

Slightly larger than Mercury's orbit around the Sun

Discovery Methods

• Measuring the motions of gas

NGC 3516

An artist's concept of a black hole like the one at the center of NGC 3516. Hot gas swirls around the black hole, and "jets"� of subatomic particles escape from the poles of the disk of hot gas.

An optical image of NGC 3616, showing how the bright core overwhelms the rest of the galaxy.

This document was last modified: November 19, 2009.