Sphere of Influence: Measuring the Mass of a Black Hole

27 January, 2020 / Read time: 1 minute

Video presenting the combined image of NGC 1332, showing the disk of gas surrounding the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy. New observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have made it possible to determine the motion of the disk and to make very precise measurements of the mass of the black hole, which is 660 million times the mass of our Sun.

Credits: National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO)