Type

Supermassive

Location

In the constellation Virgo

Finder Chart

Distance

700 million light-years

Mass

100 million times the mass of the Sun

Size

Greater than the size of the asteroid belt in our solar system

Discovery Methods

• Detection of an accretion disk

1

This series of illustrations shows a yellow star that travels too close to a giant black hole in the center of the galaxy RX J1242-11. As it nears the black hole, it’s stretched and torn apart by tidal gravity. Although a small amount of material is captured by the black hole and forms a rotating disk around it, most of the gaseous debris escapes the black hole. Gas in the disk is heated to million of degrees, so it produces X-rays, before it falls into the black hole. [ESA]

This document was last modified: March 3, 2011.