With a mass of 40 billion solar masses, this is the most massive black hole known today in the local universe.
Dr Roberto Saglia, senior scientist at the Max Planck Institute, said: ”This is several times larger than expected from indirect measurements, such as the stellar mass or the velocity dispersion of the galaxy.”
The light profile of the galaxy shows a centre with an extremely low and very diffuse surface brightness, far fainter than otherwise similar elliptical galaxies.
Kianusch Mehrgan University Observatory Munich doctoral student, who performed the data analysis, added: “The light profile in the inner core is also very flat.
