Astronomers have discovered the closest known black hole to Earth, just 1,600 light years away.
Scientists said on Friday that this black hole is 10 times bigger than our sun and three times closer than the previous record-holder.
It was identified by observing the motion of its companion star, which orbits the black hole at about the same distance as Earth orbits the sun.
"Take the Solar System, put a black hole where the Sun is, and the Sun where the Earth is, and you get this system," explains @CenterforAstro's Kareem El-Badry, the lead author of a new paper describing the closest black hole to Earth.
Learn more: https://t.co/3teWe06faR pic.twitter.com/XwMTgjZhX9
— Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (@CenterForAstro) November 4, 2022
The black hole was initially identified using the European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft, said Kareem El-Badry of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics.
Mr El-Badry and his team followed up with the International Gemini Observatory in Hawaii to confirm their findings, which were published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
The researchers are uncertain how the system formed in the Milky Way.
Named Gaia BH1, it is located in the constellation Ophiuchus, the serpent-bearer.
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