Gaia BH1 Sets Closest Black Hole Record at 1,600 Light-Years, Weighing 10 Suns
Updated
Updated · Sky at Night Magazine · Aug 19
Gaia BH1 Sets Closest Black Hole Record at 1,600 Light-Years, Weighing 10 Suns
3 articles · Updated · Sky at Night Magazine · Aug 19
Summary
Gaia BH1 sits 1,600 light-years from Earth, making it the closest known black hole and a new record-holder among stellar-mass black holes.
ESA's Gaia telescope flagged the unusual motion of a Sun-like star, and follow-up observations showed it orbits an unseen companion with about 10 times the Sun's mass.
The system is the first unambiguous case of a Sun-like star in a wide orbit around a stellar-mass black hole in the Milky Way, according to the study team.
That wide separation—roughly the Earth-Sun distance—makes the pair hard to explain under standard binary evolution models because the star somehow survived its companion's hypergiant phase before collapse.