US Team Sees 'Supermassive' Black Holes

The biggest black holes known to science are found sitting at the centres of two nearby galaxies: NGC 3842 and NGC 4889.

Having masses as large as 10 billion times that of our Sun, such huge objects had only been suspected to exist with the biggest to-date having a mass 6.3 billion times that of the Sun. Observations of quasars - powerful galactic light sources - from the early Universe indicated the existence of such huge black holes powering the quasars.

The study was conducted using ground and space-based telescopes.