Astronomers have identified a new cosmic heavyweight an ultramassive black hole weighing 36 billion times the Sun’s mass, possibly the most massive ever recorded. Nestled at the heart of the Cosmic Horseshoe galaxy, located roughly 5 billion light-years from Earth, this dormant giant warps spacetime to bend light from a background galaxy into a striking horseshoe-shaped Einstein ring.

Through a novel combination of gravitational lensing and stellar kinematics, researchers measured both the deflection of light and stars racing at nearly 400 km/s around the galactic core. These complementary methods provide strong evidence of the black hole’s presence and mass.

Its mass exceeds typical estimates from the well-known MBH–σₑ (black-hole mass–stellar velocity) relation, suggesting unusual growth possibly via galaxy mergers, feedback from Active Galactic Nuclei, or a history as a quasar core.

This discovery not only broadens our understanding of ultramassive black holes (UMBHs) but also demonstrates the power of combined observational techniques to detect and weigh even the most silent cosmic giants.