NGC 4395 Black Hole size and scale context

The black hole in NGC 4395 powers an active galactic nucleus inside a small bulgeless galaxy. Its existence helped show that a galaxy does not need a large central bulge to host a feeding central black hole. Read its scale context, comparisons, and journey links on the canonical object page.

Cygnus X-1Stellar black hole·120 km

NGC 4395 Black HoleIntermediate-mass black hole·61,000 km

SunG-type main-sequence star·1.39 million km

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Between the smallest and the largest, perspective is everything.

About

Scale of Space is a scroll-based journey through the universe, placing objects on a single logarithmic scale so you can compare size across an unbroken range.

Guides turn parts of that scale into curated essays, while focused views let you explore the same range through specific groups of objects.

Editorial

Solar System Planets From Electron to Atoms Stars To Scale Birth And Death Of Stars Black Holes To Scale

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Planets of the Solar System Stars of the Universe Black holes Subatomic scale

Open Scale of Space Browse all comparisons

Between the smallest and the largest, perspective is everything.

About

Scale of Space is a scroll-based journey through the universe, placing objects on a single logarithmic scale so you can compare size across an unbroken range.

Guides turn parts of that scale into curated essays, while focused views let you explore the same range through specific groups of objects.

Editorial

Solar System Planets From Electron to Atoms Stars To Scale Birth And Death Of Stars Black Holes To Scale

Views

Planets of the Solar System Stars of the Universe Black holes Subatomic scale

Open Scale of Space Browse all comparisons

Black holes

Cygnus X-1

Cygnus X-1 was the first cosmic object widely accepted as a black hole. It blazes in X-rays because the black hole is stripping hot gas from a massive blue supergiant companion and funneling it into a compact accretion flow.

Scale fact120 kmevent horizon diameter

Object class: Stellar black hole
Mass: ~21 solar masses
Estimated age: ~5 million years
Host: Cygnus X-1 binary system

Black holes

NGC 4395 Black Hole

Scale fact61,000 kmevent horizon diameter

Object class: Intermediate-mass black hole
Host: NGC 4395
Mass: ~10,000 solar masses

Stars

Sun

The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System and the engine behind every climate and orbit within it. It fuses about 600 million metric tons of hydrogen each second, while photons created in the core can take roughly 250,000 years to work their way to the visible surface.

Scale fact1.39 million kmdiameter

Object class: G-type main-sequence star
Mass: ~333,000 Earth masses
Temperature: 5,772 K surface
Estimated age: ~4.6 billion years
Composition: Hydrogen and helium