Nearest Pair of Supermassive Black Holes in Galaxy NGC 7727: Close-up View | ESO

Nearest Pair of Supermassive Black Holes in Galaxy NGC 7727: Close-up View | ESO

Close-up view of the two bright galactic nuclei, each housing a supermassive black hole, in NGC 7727, a galaxy located 89 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Aquarius. Each nucleus consists of a dense group of stars with a supermassive black hole at its center. The two black holes are on a collision course and form the closest pair of supermassive black holes found to date. It is also the pair with the smallest separation between two supermassive black holes—observed just 1,600 light-years apart in the sky.  

The image was taken with the MUSE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the Paranal Observatory in Chile.

Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO)/Voggel et al.

Release Date: November 30, 2021

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