WASHINGTON—The Large Magellanic Cloud is a dwarf galaxy residing near our Milky Way, visible to the naked eye as a luminous patch of light from Earth’s southern hemisphere and named after Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, who observed it five centuries ago. New research is now providing a fuller understanding of the makeup of our galactic neighbor.
A study based on the trajectory of nine fast-moving stars observed at the fringes of the Milky Way provides strong evidence for the existence of a supermassive black hole inside the Large Magellanic Cloud. Most galaxies are thought to have such a black hole at their core, but this represents the first evidence for one within the Large Magellanic Cloud.
