Gallery of All-Star Black Holes

Scientists believe the universe holds an enormous number of black holes. About one in one thousand stars have enough mass to become a black hole when it dies. The Milky Way galaxy alone could harbor up to one hundred million stellar-sized black holes. Presumably the hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe have a similar number of stellar black holes. And we are pretty sure that a hulking supermassive black hole is at the center of all those galaxies. It is impossible to profile all the black holes in the universe. Here are some that scientists think are the most notable:

Sagittarius A*

Type: Supermassive

Mass: About four million times the mass of the sun

Location: In the constellation Sagittarius, at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, about 26,000 light-years from Earth

What makes it an all-star: Responsible for creating conditions favorable to life on Earth

NGC 1600

Type: Supermassive

Mass: Seventeen billion times the mass of the sun

Location: In the constellation Eridanus, 200 million light-years from Earth

What makes it an all-star: The biggest black hole discovered to date

J0100+2802

Type: Supermassive

Mass: About twelve to thirteen billion times the mass of the sun

Location: 12.8 billion light-years from Earth

What makes it an all-star: Born about one billion years after the big bang; still puzzling to scientists about how it grew so large, so fast

GRS 1915+105 (and Its Companion Star)

Type: Stellar

Mass: About fourteen times the mass of the sun

Location: In the constellation Aquila, about 40,000 light-years from Earth

What makes it an all-star: The fastest spinning black hole ever discovered, a whirling dervish that feeds off the material of its companion star, with material on the edge of its event horizon spinning at about 350 million miles (563 million km) per hour, or about half the speed of light

Cygnus X-1

Type: Stellar

Mass: About 14.8 times the mass of the sun

Location: In the constellation Cygnus, about 6,000 to 8,000 lightyears away from Earth

What makes it an all-star: One of the first black holes scientists discovered; emits some of the strongest X-rays ever detected from Earth

IGR J17091

Type: Stellar

Mass: Less than three times the mass of the sun

Location: In the Milky Way, about 28,000 light-years from Earth

What makes it an all-star: The smallest black hole yet discovered, near the theoretical minimum for the formation of a black hole; creates cosmic winds clocked at 20 million miles (32 million km) per hour, nearly ten times faster than has ever been observed from a stellar black hole