NASA Animation Sizes Up the Biggest Black Holes

Editors Note: A previous version of this video mislabeled the orbit of Saturn as the orbit of Jupiter. This new NASA animation highlights the super in supermassive black holes. These monsters lurk in the centers of most big galaxies, including our own Milky Way, and contain between 100, 000 and tens of billions of times more mass than our Sun. Any light crossing the event horizon the black holes point of no return becomes trapped forever, and any light passing close to it is redirected by the black holes intense gravity. Together, these effects produce a shadow about twice the size of the black holes actual event horizon. The animation shows 10 supersized black holes that occupy center stage in their host galaxies, including the Milky Way and M87, scaled by the sizes of their shadows. Starting near the Sun, the camera steadily pulls back to compare everlarger black holes to different structures in our solar system. First up is 1601+3113, a dwarf galaxy hosting a bla