An elusive supermassive blackhole has been discovered in a nearby galaxy that’s millions of light-years away from Earth.
A supermassive blackhole—one measuring millions or billions of times the mass of the Sun—was found at the center of a nearby spiral galaxy known as Messier 83 (M83) by the James Webb Space Telescope, a joint project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.
The findings, published in The Astrophysical Journal, reveal evidence of highly ionized neon gas, which could be a telltale sign of an active galactic nucleus (AGN), the bright, compact central portion of a galaxy.
Also known as the Southern Pinwheel, M83 is 15 million light-years away from Earth and was discovered back in 1752.
“With an apparent magnitude of 7.5, M83 is one of the brightest spiral galaxies in the night sky,” NASA notes, and it can most easily be observed in June using a pair of …