How Many Supermassive Black Holes???!!!???

I saw the headline to the following article and had to read it three (pun intended) times to convince myself I was reading it correctly.

Astronomers Find a Galaxy Containing Three Supermassive Black Holes at the Center

That's right, three...THREE supermassive black holes at the center of this galaxy. A single, supermassive black hole is usually found at the center of a galaxy. This supermassive black hole, around a few million of our suns combined, is created as the galaxy forms. As the galaxy forms from a large cloud of gas and dust, enough mass gets packed into a tight enough space that gravity becomes so large that not even light can escape. Thus the name, black hole. But how did this galaxy get three supermassive black holes?

Image Credit: P Weilbacher (AIP), NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration, and A Evans (University of Virginia, Charlottesville/NRAO/Stony Brook University)

It turns out this galaxy is the result of three galaxies merging, each with their own supermassive black hole. The black holes have not yet merged and are all seen separately. Now that's cool! The image above, taken from the linked article, maps out the location of the three black holes. 

Astronomy never ceases to amaze!