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.