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Having a mass many times (typically between 10⁶ and 10⁹ times) that of the sun.
‘a supermassive star’
‘An international team of astronomers have provided compelling evidence that we have a supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy.’
‘But others, such as the Milky Way, would still have formed a supermassive black hole despite never being a quasar.’
‘Two types of black holes are found in the universe: stellar-mass black holes and supermassive black holes.’
‘This discovery suggests that surveys of powerful supermassive black holes have so far underestimated their numbers by at least a factor of two, and possibly by up to a factor of five.’
‘Although astronomers are surprised to find a blue disk of stars swirling around a supermassive black hole, they also say the puzzling architecture may not be that unusual.’