It sits in the heart of a galaxy so massive it bends light into the shape of a giant horseshoe. And within that galaxy lurks an even greater monster: a black hole 36 billion times the mass of our Sun.

Students in a joint UT Austin and UTSA astronomy course say they have zeroed in on an unexpectedly massive black hole parked ...

Astronomers capture the twinkle of a distant quasar, RX J1131, and reveal the secret size of a black hole's fiery corona.

What just happened? Astronomers have identified what may be the largest black hole ever discovered – one with a mass 36 billion times that of our Sun. Located at the center of the Cosmic Horseshoe ...

Sagittarius A* is the supermassive black hole sitting at the core of the Milky Way. It has a mass of 4.3 million times our ...

Seen from Earth, the giant elliptical galaxy M87 is just a two-dimensional blob, though one that appears perfectly symmetrical and thus a favored target of amateur astronomers. Yet, a new, highly ...

Surprisingly, some of the universe's brightest objects are black holes. As scorching gas and dust flow around and into a ...

Until recently, a large black hole formed from a collapsed star was able to avoid detection from the prying eyes of our powerful telescopes – despite lurking nearby Earth and being 33 times the mass ...

From Earth, giant elliptical galaxies resemble highly symmetric blobs, but what's their real 3D structure? Astronomers have assembled one of the first 3D views of a giant elliptical galaxy, M87, whose ...

The first-ever sighting of starlight from a galaxy hosting one of the most distant quasars known has revealed an astronomical oddity. Quasars — blazingly bright galactic cores — owe their brilliance ...

A photo of the huge elliptical galaxy M87 [left] is compared to its three-dimensional shape as gleaned from meticulous observations made with the Hubble and Keck telescopes [right]. Because the galaxy ...