Scientists Find Massive Black Hole With Weight of 17 Billion Suns in Unlikely Place

Astronomers have discovered a super-massive black hole with the weight of 17 billion suns in the NGC 1600 galaxy, 200 million years from the Milky Way.

(L-R) Comparison of the central portions of the dense Coma Cluster with the sparse NGC 1600 galaxy group (Second Palomar Observatory Sky Survey).

Astronomers have discovered a super-massive black hole with the weight of 17 billion suns in the NGC 1600 galaxy, 200 million light-years from the Milky Way. 

It’s not the biggest black hole ever discovered—the reigning champion weighs 21 billion suns—but its location, in a sparsely populated galaxy, makes it a maverick among black holes.

It's a bit like finding a skyscraper in a Kansas wheat field, rather than in Manhattan.

— Chung-Pei Ma, University of California Berkeley