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Black Holes Encyclopedia
Stats

Type

Supermassive

Location

in the constellation Virgo

Finder Chart

Distance

100 million light-years (31.6 megaparsecs)

Mass

500 million to 1.2 billion times the mass of the Sun

Size

Diameter range from the size of Saturn's orbit around the Sun to the size of Neptune's orbit

Discovery Methods

1
Image

NGC 4261

The lines added to this HST image show the "jets" of energy that are beaming from the poles of the supermassive black hole in NGC 4261. [NASA/ Walter Jaffe (Leiden Observatory)/Holland Ford/JHU/STScI]

This document was last modified: January 23, 2006.