How big are intermediate-mass black holes?

How big are intermediate-mass black holes?

Between stellar-mass black holes and supermassive black holes are intermediate-mass black holes: a long-sought “missing link” in black hole evolution. Only a few intermediate-mass black hole candidates have been found to date, including one found by the Hubble Space Telescope earlier this year. 

These objects are even more difficult to find because they tend to be less active without nearby “fuel” to gobble up.The recent black hole Hubble found is over 50,000 times the mass of the Sun. Discovered in a distant, dense star cluster on the outskirts of a larger galaxy, it was precisely where astronomers expected to find evidence for these “missing links.” At tens of thousands of solar masses, the intermediate-mass black hole candidate would still only have a radius one-fifth that of the Sun, or about twice the radius of Jupiter. 

And while significantly big, intermediate-mass black holes only range from about 100 to 100,000 solar masses. Meanwhile, supermassive black holes can reach up to billions of times the mass of the Sun.