What is the nearest black hole to Earth?
The nearest black hole in this catalog is A0620-00, about 3,500 ly away: a stellar-mass hole feeding on an ordinary companion star, of roughly 6.6 solar masses. Everything about A0620-00 →
| # | Black hole | Distance | Mass |
|---|---|---|---|
| ★ 1 | A0620-00 | 3,500 ly | 6.6 suns |
| 2 | Cygnus X-1 | 7,200 ly | 21.2 suns |
| 3 | V404 Cygni | 7,800 ly | 9.0 suns |
| 4 | GRO J1655-40 | 11,000 ly | 6.3 suns |
| 5 | Sgr A* | 26,000 ly | 4,300,000 suns |
| 6 | GRS 1915+105 | 28,000 ly | 12.4 suns |
| 7 | LMC X-1 | 163,000 ly | 10.9 suns |
| 8 | M31* | 2.5 million ly | 140,000,000 suns |
| 9 | Bode's Galaxy Central Black Hole | 12 million ly | 70,000,000 suns |
| 10 | Centaurus A Central Black Hole | 12 million ly | 55,000,000 suns |
| 11 | Messier 106 Central Black Hole | 24 million ly | 39,000,000 suns |
| 12 | Sombrero Central Black Hole | 30 million ly | 1,000,000,000 suns |
| 13 | M87* | 54 million ly | 6,500,000,000 suns |
| 14 | GW241011_233834 | 691 million ly | 24.4 suns |
| 15 | GW190814 | 750 million ly | 25.7 suns |
| 16 | GW200115_042309 | 946 million ly | 7.2 suns |
| 17 | GW230814_230901 | 946 million ly | 59.0 suns |
| 18 | GW230627_015337 | 995 million ly | 13.6 suns |
| 19 | GW250119_190238 | 1.0 billion ly | 20.6 suns |
| 20 | GW170608 | 1.1 billion ly | 17.7 suns |
| 21 | GW191216_213338 | 1.1 billion ly | 18.9 suns |
| 22 | GW240925_005809 | 1.2 billion ly | 15.3 suns |
| 23 | GW241102_124058 | 1.3 billion ly | 18.1 suns |
| 24 | GW250114_082203 | 1.3 billion ly | 62.9 suns |
| 25 | GW200202_154313 | 1.3 billion ly | 16.8 suns |
Showing the top 25 of 291 that qualify.
Almost every black hole we know was found because it is doing something visible. A stellar-mass hole in a binary drags gas off its companion, and that gas heats to millions of degrees and blazes in X-rays on its way in, which is how the nearest ones on this table were identified: not by seeing the hole, but by seeing what it eats.
That method has an obvious blind spot. A black hole with nothing to feed on emits nothing at all, and there are expected to be a hundred million of them in the Milky Way. Quiet ones can only be found by their gravity, through the wobble they induce in a companion star or the way they bend the light of something behind them, and surveys built for that work have begun turning up closer candidates than this catalog carries. The honest phrasing of this record is therefore the nearest black hole we hold, not the nearest that exists.
What is the nearest black hole to Earth?
The nearest black hole in this catalog is A0620-00, about 3,500 ly away: a stellar-mass hole feeding on an ordinary companion star, of roughly 6.6 solar masses.
How far away is the nearest black hole?
The nearest in this catalog, A0620-00, lies about 3,500 ly away. Astrometric surveys have since found quieter, closer candidates that this catalog does not carry, so treat this as the nearest one here rather than the nearest one there is.
Is a nearby black hole dangerous?
No. A black hole has no more gravitational reach than any other object of the same mass: replace the Sun with a black hole of one solar mass and Earth's orbit would not change, only the light would go out. Thousands of light-years away, one has no effect on us whatsoever.
How many black holes are in the Milky Way?
Estimates run to around a hundred million stellar-mass black holes, plus the supermassive one at the centre. We have identified a few dozen, because the rest are not eating anything and give off no light to find them by.
Keep exploring: all records · every black hole we hold · the most massive black hole