A black hole is an astronomical object whose gravity is so strong that nothing—even light—can escape from within its event horizon. It forms when a massive star’s core collapses or through other processes, and may have an accretion disk of infalling matter that emits radiation. Supermassive black holes at galaxy centers influence stellar orbits, and mergers produce gravitational waves.
Source: nasa.gov
10/07/2017

What's happening around the center of this spiral galaxy? Seen in total, NGC 1512 appears to be a barred spiral galaxy -- a type of spiral that has a straight bar of stars across its center. This bar crosses an inner ring, though, a ring not seen as it surrounds the pictured region. Featured in this Hubble Space Telescope image is a "nuclear ring" -- one that surrounds the nucleus of the spiral. The two rings are connected not only by a bar of bright stars but by dark lanes of dust. Inside of this nuclearring, dust continues to spiral right into the very center -- possibly the location of a large black hole. The rings are bright with newly formed stars.