Fast Exit

A supermassive black hole appears to speeding away from the center of the distant galaxy shown at top center of this image. The galaxy formed when two smaller galaxies merged. (Their two cores are still visible as the two bright points of light at the center of the image.) The central black holes from the two galaxies probably merged. Gravitational waves from the final merger gave the combined black hole, which is about 10 million times the mass of the Sun, a powerful kick. Today, the merged black hole is moving fast enough to leave the galaxy behind. The galaxy, known as CID-42, is about four billion light-years away. [NASA/CXC/SAO/F.Civano et al./STScI]