The Maw is a seemingly unstable and mostly unnavigable cluster of black holes in the fictional Star Wars universe. It is located near the planet Kessel, and was the site of Grand Moff Tarkin's Maw Installation to build the first prototype Death Star. Tarkin knew that the Maw's near-inaccessability and remoteness made it easy for him to hide the project.

The installation was actually located within a safe zone inside the cluster discovered just prior to the start of the project. The remaining area of the Maw is saturated in radiation, plasma, and strong gravitational forces. Any who got near the edge of the Maw would notice pieces of their ships being pulled apart, and some brave smugglers and criminals used it as a shortcut past the Kessel Run .

The stability of the cluster itself is something of a mystery, with some believing that a advanced civilization might have constructed it, rather than it merging together like a normal cluster would.

Han Solo boasts in A New Hope that he "made the Kessel Run in under 12 parsecs" which at first seems incorrect as parsecs are a unit of distance, rather than time. However it is speculated that Solo skirted dangerously close past the Maw at lightspeed, thus achieving a run under a distance of 12 parsecs.

The Maw was also the location of the creation and destruction of the Sun Crusher; it was constructed at the Maw installation and destroyed when it was sent into one of the black holes within the Maw.

Sources

SWTC - Death Stars