Black holes, the big bad villains of the universe that do not even allow light to pass through, are closer to us than we thought. Astronomers have now found the closest-known black hole to Earth, which falls in the stellar-mass category and has instantly become a target for the understanding of the evolution of these extreme objects.
The black hole spotted closest to Earth is about 10 times more massive than the Sun and is located about 1600 light-years away in the constellation Ophiuchus, which makes it three times closer to Earth than the previous record holder, an X-ray binary in the constellation of Monoceros.
Astronomers used the Gemini North telescope on Hawai‘i, one of the twin telescopes of the International Gemini Observatory to make observations of the motion of the black hole’s companion, a Sun-like star that orbits the black hole at about the same distance as the Earth orbits the Sun.
