Astronomers have identified an ultramassive black hole that could be the largest ever measured, hidden in a distant galaxy known as the Cosmic Horseshoe. This gargantuan object, weighing about 36 billion Suns, warps space so strongly that light from a background galaxy is bent into a perfect Einstein ring.

The black hole sits five billion light-years from Earth. It lies at the centre of a giant galaxy in the Cosmic Horseshoe system.

Astronomers have discovered potentially the most massive black hole ever detected. The cosmic behemoth is close to the theoretical upper limit of what is possible in the universe and is 10,000 times heavier than the black hole at the center of our own Milky Way galaxy.