Astronomers find closest black hole to Earth, hints of more
Source: AP
By SETH BORENSTEIN
Meet your new but shy galactic neighbor: A black hole left over from the death of a fleeting young star.
European astronomers have found the closest black hole to Earth yet, so near that the two stars dancing with it can be seen by the naked eye.
Of course, close is relative on the galactic scale. This black hole is about 1,000 light-years away and each light-year is 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion kilometers). But in terms of the cosmos and even the galaxy, it is in our neighborhood, said European Southern Observatory astronomer Thomas Rivinius, who led the study published Wednesday in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
The previous closest black hole is probably about three times further, about 3,200 light-years, he said.
This illustration provided by the European Southern Observatory in May 2020 shows the orbits of the objects in the HR 6819 triple system. The group is made up of an inner binary with one star, orbit in blue, and a newly discovered black hole, orbit in red, as well as a third star in a wider orbit, blue. The team originally believed there were only two objects, the two stars, in the system. However, as they analysed their observations, they revealed a third, previously undiscovered body in HR 6819: a black hole, the closest ever found to Earth, about 1000 light years away. The black hole is invisible, but it makes its presence known by its gravitational pull, which forces the luminous inner star into an orbit. The objects in this inner pair have roughly the same mass and circular orbits. (L. Calçada/ESO via AP)
Read more: https://apnews.com/77d61e9256f39aae8e75673e572e9080
= new reply since forum marked as read
that's the whine hole. 
RA 18h17m07.5s __ Dec -56°01'24"
Its magnitude is in the 5.3 range so yeah, if you're in the southern hemisphere and have decent skies and good eyes, you'd be able to pick out the star. But it'd be a lot easier with binoculars.
(Nerd alert off 
)
