Only 1,560 light-years away, a cosmic ghost hides in plain sight.
Discovered in 2022, Gaia BH1 is the closest known black hole system to our Solar System, quietly lurking in the Ophiuchus constellation. But unlike typical black holes, this one has no glowing accretion disk—making it almost invisible.
With a mass 9.6 times that of the Sun, Gaia BH1 silently pulls on a Sun-like companion star that orbits it every 185.6 days—at a distance comparable to Earth’s orbit.
What makes it truly fascinating:
It’s bright, nearby... yet hidden
The companion star is metal-poor, puzzling astronomers
It hints that silent black holes in wide binary systems might be common
A dark heavyweight dancing with a lone star—reshaping what we know about black holes living quietly among us.
Discovered in 2022, Gaia BH1 is the closest known black hole system to our Solar System, quietly lurking in the Ophiuchus constellation. But unlike typical black holes, this one has no glowing accretion disk—making it almost invisible.
With a mass 9.6 times that of the Sun, Gaia BH1 silently pulls on a Sun-like companion star that orbits it every 185.6 days—at a distance comparable to Earth’s orbit.
What makes it truly fascinating:
It’s bright, nearby... yet hidden
The companion star is metal-poor, puzzling astronomers
It hints that silent black holes in wide binary systems might be common
A dark heavyweight dancing with a lone star—reshaping what we know about black holes living quietly among us.
Only 1,560 light-years away, a cosmic ghost hides in plain sight.
Discovered in 2022, Gaia BH1 is the closest known black hole system to our Solar System, quietly lurking in the Ophiuchus constellation. But unlike typical black holes, this one has no glowing accretion disk—making it almost invisible.
With a mass 9.6 times that of the Sun, Gaia BH1 silently pulls on a Sun-like companion star that orbits it every 185.6 days—at a distance comparable to Earth’s orbit.
What makes it truly fascinating:
It’s bright, nearby... yet hidden
The companion star is metal-poor, puzzling astronomers
It hints that silent black holes in wide binary systems might be common
A dark heavyweight dancing with a lone star—reshaping what we know about black holes living quietly among us.
