Oh my, this recently discovered black hole... well, it’s big. //

Among black holes whose masses scientists can directly infer based on the motion of their host galaxies’ stars, it’s the biggest. It’s 40 billion times the mass of the Sun big—that’s around 2.5 percent the mass of the entire Milky Way galaxy. //

By watching the motions of the stars, scientists can relate the stellar velocity to the mass of the object that the stars are orbiting—revealing the 40-billion-solar-mass black hole at the center. This is the largest black hole mass calculated using this method so far, according to the paper published in The Astrophysical Journal. It’s twice as large as the last record holders and 10,000 times more massive than the black hole at the center of the Milky Way. //

The discovery of ultra-heavy black holes is still limited by today’s observational capabilities, since scientists must be able to resolve the motion of objects in the host galaxies. Larger black holes probably reside beyond the realm of today’s telescopes.