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

Animation of star ripped apart by RX J1242-11's black hole. [Credit: ESA]

This document was last modified: March 2, 2011.