Astronomers Confirm Supermassive Black Hole in Nearby Large Magellanic Cloud

Researchers traced hypervelocity stars to reveal a 600,000-solar-mass black hole in the Milky Way's closest galactic neighbor.

The Large Magellanic Cloud, located 160,000 light-years from Earth, hosts a newly confirmed supermassive black hole with a mass of 600,000 suns.
This discovery was made by analyzing the trajectories of hypervelocity stars, which were ejected after close encounters with the black hole.
The European Space Agency's Gaia mission provided precise data on star movements, enabling researchers to trace their origins to the Large Magellanic Cloud.
Hypervelocity stars are created when a binary star system is disrupted by a black hole, with one star captured and the other flung away at extreme speeds.
This black hole is the closest supermassive black hole outside the Milky Way, second only to Sagittarius A* at the center of our galaxy.