An international team of researchers has succeeded in imaging two black holes orbiting each other at the center of a quasar called OJ287. Quasars are extremely bright galactic cores, whose light is produced when a supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy devours the cosmic gas and dust around it.

In the past, astronomers have managed to image the black hole in the center of the Milky Way and in a nearby galaxy called Messier 87.

"Quasar OJ287 is so bright that it can be detected even by amateur astronomers with private telescopes. What is special about OJ287 is that it has been thought to harbor not one but two black holes circling each other in a 12-year orbit, which produces an easily recognizable pattern of light variations in the same period," says first author of the research article Mauri Valtonen from the University of Turku, Finland. The work is published in The Astrophysical Journal.