List of most massive black holes
This is a list of the largest known black holes by mass. The unit of measurement used is the solar mass (M☉), or the mass of the Sun (approx. 2×1030 kilograms).
All black holes in this list are classified as supermassive, with masses from a few million to several billion M☉.
The order of this list is speculative:
- There are wildly varying ranges in mass estimates of some black holes, due to unknown speed and rotation of their event horizons, giving estimates in a wide range. Such an example is the black hole in NGC 4889, which can be as low as 6 billion M☉ or can be as large as 37 billion M☉.
- Most black holes are occluded by matter from their host galaxies, making the estimates of their mass not clearly defined.
- The M-sigma relation can only be estimated by observing orbiting bodies, however, due to their distances, such estimates are often quite doubtful.
- The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) has surveyed some supermassive black holes in distant galaxies and 10 of them are found to be larger than the 1 billion M☉ cutoff point at this table, with the largest of around 17 billion M☉.
List
| Black hole name | Solar mass (Sun = 1) |
Notes |
|---|---|---|
| S5 0014+813 | 40,000,000,000 | Methods of estimating the mass of this black hole is poorly detailed due to the broad long wavelength emission lines and the extreme luminosity of the quasar. |
| SDSS J085543.40-001517.7 | 25,000,000,000 | Estimate ranges from 14 to 39 billion M☉ |
| APM 08279+5255 | 23,000,000,000 | |
| NGC 4889 | 21,000,000,000 | Best fit: the estimate ranges from 6 billion to 37 billion M☉. |
| Central black hole ofPhoenix Cluster | 20,000,000,000 | This black hole is continuously growing at the rate of 60 M☉ per year. |
| OJ 287 primary | 18,000,000,000 | A smaller 100 million M☉ black hole orbits this black hole in a 12 year period. |
| SDSS J013127.34-032100.1 | 11,000,000,000 | |
| Central black hole ofMS 0735.6+7421 | 10,000,000,000 | Produced a colossal AGN outburst after accreting 600 million M☉ worth of material. |
| Central black hole ofRX J1532.9+3021 | 10,000,000,000 | |
| NGC 3842 | 9,700,000,000 | Brightest galaxy in the Leo Cluster |
| Messier 87 | 6,300,000,000 | Central galaxy of the Virgo Cluster; notable for its 4,300 light-year long relativistic jet. |
| NGC 1277 | 5,000,000,000 | Once thought to harbor a black hole so large that it contradicted modern galaxy formation and evolutionary theories, re-analysis of the data revised it downward to roughly a third of the original estimate. |
| Messier 60 | 4,500,000,000 | |
| Hercules A (3C 348) | 4,000,000,000 | Notable for its million light-year long relativistic jet. |
| ULAS J1120+0641 | 2,000,000,000 | Also on record as the most distant quasar known, at z=7.085 |
| NGC 3115 | 2,000,000,000 | Also the nearest known billion solar mass black hole, at 32 million light-years away. |
| Q0906+6930 | 2,000,000,000 | Most distant known blazar, at z = 5.47 |
| Messier 84 | 1,500,000,000 |
| The following well-known black holes are listed for the purpose of comparison | ||||
| Sombrero Galaxy | 1,000,000,000 | |||
| Markarian 501 | 900,000,000-3,400,000,000 | Brightest object in the sky in very high energy gamma rays. | ||
| Messier 49 | 560,000,000 | |||
| NGC 1275 | 340,000,000 | Central galaxy of the Perseus Cluster | ||
| Andromeda Galaxy | 230,000,000 | |||
| Messier 105 | 140,000,000-200,000,000 | |||
| Messier 85 | 100,000,000 | |||
| Messier 81 (Bode’s Galaxy) | 70,000,000 | |||
| Centaurus A | 55,000,000 | Also notable for its million light-year long relativistic jet | ||
| Messier 82 (Cigar Galaxy) | 30,000,000 | Prototype starburst galaxy. | ||
| Messier 108 | 24,000,000 | |||
| Messier 61 | 5,000,000 | |||
| Messier 32 | 1,500,000-5,000,000 | A dwarf satellite galaxy of the Andromeda Galaxy. | ||
| Sagittarius A* | 4,100,000 | The black hole at the Milky Way‘s center. | ||
Trinh Manh Do
This post right here is like an entire astronomy course. Thanks for including all those links so we can check out Saggitarius A, for example, or a relativistic jet which I’ve never even heard of before).
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