and in related news…

Most Massive Black Hole Found By Texas Telescope

Astronomers using a telescope in the Lone Star state have measured what they believe is the most massive black hole yet recorded, The University of Texas at Austin (UT) announced on Wednesday.

The black hole, which lies at the center of the galaxy NGC 1277, located some 220 million light-years from Earth, is so big it is difficult to comprehend: It is 17 billion solar masses, or 17 billion times the mass of our Sun, and makes up 14 percent of its relatively small host galaxy’s entire mass. The galaxy in question is about 10 percent the size of our Milky Way, for reference.

The black hole is so wide that it would extend well past the orbit of Neptune around our Sun were it transposed to our Solar System — subsuming most of it — as the following illustration from UT indicates:

Image: black-hole-most-massive-ill-s.jpg