The discovery of the "closest black hole to Earth"... How far is it from our planet?

 Astronomers have discovered the closest "known" black hole to Earth, indicating that it is about 1,600 light-years away from our planet. And scientists reported, on Friday, that this black hole is 10 times larger than the sun, and that it is three times closer than the hole that held the previous record in terms of proximity.

The hole was discovered by observing the movement of its companion star, which orbits the black hole at approximately the same distance as the Earth orbits the sun. Karim Al-Badri, from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in the US state of Massachusetts, said that the black hole was initially discovered using the European Space Agency's "Gaia" spacecraft.

Al-Badri and his team worked with the Gemini International Observatory in Hawaii to confirm their findings, which were published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Because this is the closest "known" black hole to Earth, as it is about 1,600 light-years away from our planet.