There's a black hole lurking within 1,000 light years of Earth – and you can see stars circling it w

[Curious layman]

Any astronomers in the Southern Hemisphere on this site?

https://www.theregister.com/2020/05/06/nearest_black_hole_earth/

Quote: Astronomers have stumbled across the nearest black hole to us yet. The void lies at the heart of a stellar system just 1,000 light years away, and indications to its location are visible to the naked eye...
The black hole obviously isn't visible to the naked eye, only the stars are, but if you want to look anyway it's located in the Telescopium constellation in the southern hemisphere. It'll be best viewed during a clear night, and two fuzzy bright pinpricks should be discernible without binoculars or a telescope.

F**k, just noticed somebody already mentioned it.
it's on page two btw.

 

[paddoboy]

Any astronomers in the Southern Hemisphere on this site?

https://www.theregister.com/2020/05/06/nearest_black_hole_earth/

Take it easy matey! This BH is 1000 L/years away and of course a BH isn't an all purpose, all powerful vacuum cleaner anyway. eg: If we squeeze the volume of our Sun into a volume of around 6 kms diameter, it would become a BH. Guess what? The orbits of all the planets would remain as is, including Mercury.
To put that another way, the inner most stable orbit of a BH is around 3 Schwarzchild radius, or three times the radius of the BH in question.
https://jila.colorado.edu/~ajsh/home.html