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Space
Space
Science
Robert Lea

James Webb Space Telescope weighs 'sleeping giant' black hole from 10 billion light-years away — and it's 6 billion times our sun's mass

The lensed galaxy MRG-M013 which the JWST used to weigh a distant supermassive black hole.

Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have "weighed" a sleeping giant — a dormant supermassive black hole located a staggering 10 billion light-years away. That makes this black hole the most distant supermassive black hole scientists have ever measured the mass of.

The supermassive black hole is located at the heart of the galaxy MRG-M0138, which is seen as it was when the universe was just around 4 billion years old — and we now know, thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), that it weighs an incredible 6 billion times the mass of the sun.

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