Messier 106 Central Black Hole

Supermassive black hole

Measured to extraordinary precision by tracking water masers in the disk that feeds it, making it a gold-standard black-hole mass.

Messier 106 Central Black Hole, a supermassive black holeComputed render
Computed render: general-relativistic ray-trace; colours mapped to a visible range. Not a photograph.
39.0 million ☉
mass (the Sun = 1)
0.77 AU
event-horizon radius (computed)
24 million ly
from Earth

Mass is a best estimate from the cited observations, which carry their own measurement uncertainty.

Its event horizon, the edge past which nothing returns, spans about 0.77 AU in radius.

It anchors
Messier 106
Spiral galaxy, 24 million ly away.
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Black holes of similar mass
Centaurus A Central Black HoleSupermassive55.0 million ☉Bode's Galaxy Central Black HoleSupermassive70.0 million ☉M31*Supermassive140.0 million ☉Sgr A*Supermassive4.3 million ☉Sombrero Central Black HoleSupermassive1.0 billion ☉M87*Supermassive6.5 billion ☉
Worlds in the same direction on the sky→
Source: Curated from public catalogs via Wikidata (CC0). See data & analysis for full sourcing.
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