#Ultramassive black hole series

↑ Irving, Michael (February 21, 2018).'Measuring Distance and Properties of the Milky Way's Central Supermassive Black Hole with Stellar Orbits'. 'Optical spectrum and redshifts of a quasar of extremely high intrinsice luminosity: B2 1225+31'.

#Ultramassive black hole series

Astronomy & Astrophysics Supplement Series 1 (3). 'A catalogue of 3235 radio sources at 408 MHz'. Boletín de los Observatorios de Tonantzintla y Tacubaya 2 (16): 3–36. ' Estrellas Azules en el Casquete Galactico Norte (Blue stars in the North Galactic Cap)'. Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science.

↑ '1963: Maarten Schmidt Discovers Quasars'.

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 414 (3): 2446–2457. A metallicity-accretion rate relationship'. 'Near-infrared spectroscopy of high-redshift active galactic nuclei: I. It shines with the power of 100 trillion Suns. It is 66 billion times more massive than the Sun and 11 Solar Systems can fit in it side by side. It contains the largest, brightest and most massive black hole known. TON 618 is an extremely bright quasar in the constellation of Canes Venatici, 18.2 billion light-years away.

The Largest Black Hole in the Universe - Size Comparison.

This also implies that the gravitational force of the black hole is very strong. The emission lines in the light spectrum of TON 618 are unusual, indicating that the gases in the disk are traveling very fast, probably at the speed of 7,000 km/s. Even if we sit 30 light-years away from the black hole, it would still be brighter than the Sun in the sky. Friction heats up the particles in the disk, making it glow 100 trillion times brighter than the Sun, making it one of the brightest known object in the Universe (not the brightest!). TON 618 is feeding on scorchingly hot gas and matter in an accretion disk. Since TON 618 is so far away, we only see how it looked like 10 billion years ago. But in reality, it is probably even larger. The event horizon of this thing can fit 11 Solar Systems side by side, so large that it would take light a week to reach the singularity after crossing the event horizon. Īccording to a black hole calculator, it would have a radius of about 207 billion km or a diameter of 414 billion km. Being this massive makes it an ultramassive black hole. This black hole is more massive than the entire Milky Way galaxy, which is 64 billion solar masses, and 15,300 times more massive than Sagittarius A*, which is 4 million solar masses. This black hole is estimated to be at least an incredible 66 billion solar masses. As a quasar, TON 618 is a galactic nucleus at the center of an invisible galaxy.

The central black hole is the engine of the quasar, an accretion disk shining brighter than thousands of galaxies. TON 618 is known for its enormous central ultramassive black hole. The absolute magnitude of the quasar is -30.7, which means even if we sit 30 light-years away from it, it is still brighter than the Sun is from Earth. On the other hand, an absolute magnitude is the brightness of the object 10 parsecs (32.6 light-years) away from it. The black hole itself can't be seen at all, while the host galaxy is outshined by the brilliance of the central quasar. The apparent magnitude of the quasar is 15.9, which is absolutely dim from Earth and requires a strong telescope to be seen. Details BrightnessĪn apparent magnitude is the brightness of something as seen from Earth. Because we can still see it from Earth, it means that the quasar is also extremely bright. This implies that the quasar is highly distant, 18.2 billion light-years away.

Ulrich also measured the quasar's redshift (the stretch of wavelength due to the expansion of the Universe) as z = 2.219 (the higher the number, the more stretched the waves are). Marie-Helene Ulrich looked at the light spectrum of TON 618, and she discovered emission lines typical of a quasar. This was when they knew this object was a quasar. In 1970, after quasars were discovered, scientists doing a radio survey at Bologna, Italy, detected radio wave emissions from TON 618. Nonetheless, it was listed as entry number 618 in the Tonantzintla catalog by the Mexican astronomers Braulio Iriarte and Enrique Chavira. The nature of this object was unknown as it appeared violet in images, and that quasars weren't known until 1963. TON 618 was first noted in a 1957 survey of faint blue stars, primarily white dwarfs, that lie in the plane of our galaxy.