supermassive black hole
black hole with mass above 10⁵ solar masses, usually found at the centers of galaxies
AI overview
A supermassive black hole is an extremely dense object with a mass greater than 100,000 times that of our Sun, and these objects are typically located at the center of galaxies. Understanding supermassive black holes matters because they appear to play a fundamental role in how galaxies form and evolve.
AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.
Article
The first direct image of a supermassive black hole, found in the galactic core of Messier 87.
A supermassive black hole (SMBH or sometimes SBH) is the largest type of black hole, with its mass being on the order of hundreds of thousands, or millions to billions, of times the mass of the Sun (M☉). Black holes are a class of astronomical objects that have undergone gravitational collapse, leaving behind spheroidal regions of space that nothing, not even light, can escape. Observational evidence indicates that almost every large galaxy has a supermassive black hole at its center. For example, the Milky Way galaxy has a supermassive black hole at its center, corresponding to the radio source Sagittarius A*. Accretion of interstellar gas onto supermassive black holes is the process responsible for powering active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and quasars.