UC Berkeley researchers have discovered the two largest black holes ever spotted, according to a recently published report in the journal Nature.

According to the researchers, the discovery of the black holes — which took about eight years of research — may help scientists further explore the ways in which black holes and galaxies form. One of the holes is located in a galaxy about 320 million light years from Earth and has a mass about 9.7 billion times the mass of the sun, while the other hole resides in a galaxy about 336 million light years from Earth and has a mass about 21 billion times that of the sun, according to the report published Thursday.

Members of the research team began looking at telescopic photographs of various galaxies about eight years ago, according to campus graduate student Nicholas McConnell, one of the researchers and an author of the report. Though the black holes were first discovered in 2003, assembling the right team of experts and quantifying the size of the holes took time, McConnell said.

“We wanted a slower, cleaner job (rather) than a quick, sloppy one,” McConnell said.

The scientists used the Gemini and Keck observatories in Hawaii and the McDonald Observatory in Texas to take “snapshots” of various galaxies and monitor how stars moved. The team then used the velocity of the stars to detect the presence of a black hole, McConnell said.

Chung-Pei Ma, a professor of astronomy at UC Berkeley and co-author of the report, said in an email that the observations were difficult because the team had to measure the motion of stars in a region about 1,000 light years large from hundreds of millions of light years away.

“This is like squinting at Jascha Heifetz playing the violin in New York’s Carnegie Hall from Washington, D.C., and trying to measure how fast his fingers were moving,” Ma said in the email.

McConnell said he hopes to use the data gathered by the team to further investigate the formation of black holes and the nature of the early universe.

Additionally, Ma said in the email that she believes the research could indicate a link between quasars — very bright and distant galaxies that are believed to be powered by black holes — and the nearby massive elliptical galaxies.

The findings may also allow researchers to gain a better grasp of how galaxies form.

“Measurements of these massive black holes will help us understand how their host galaxies were assembled, and how the holes achieved such monstrous mass,” Ma said in the email.

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