This animation shows the motions of stars caught in the gravitational field of a three-million solar mass black hole in the core of the nearby galaxy M32.
Stars swarm around the black hole like angry bees around a hive.
The animation is based on computer simulations and new Hubble Space Telescope observations of M32. The calculations were done in part on the Cray T3D Parallel Supercomputer of the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center. The observed velocities exceed those measured from previous ground-based observations, demonstrating that the stars must be attracted by an invisible black hole. In the absence of a black hole, the stars would move at a much slower rate, as shown in the animation. The velocities of the stars near its nucleus suggested the presence of a black hole as early as 1984.