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Black Holes · 8 guides

Black Holes

The confirmed monsters, photographed, weighed and orbited.

Start with Sagittarius A* At the center of our galaxy sits a supermassive black hole: 4.3 million Suns in silence.

Black Hole

M87* The first black hole ever photographed is 6.5 billion Suns wearing a ring of fire.

Black Hole

Cygnus X-1 A dying star's corpse stealing gas from its companion was the first black hole ever found.

Black Hole

TON 618 A quasar powered by one of the heaviest black holes ever weighed.

Black Hole

GW150914 The first gravitational-wave detection: two black holes heard colliding.

Black Hole

A0620-00 (V616 Mon) A quiet monster with a captive star, and for decades the nearest known black hole.

Black Hole

Gaia BH1 The nearest known black hole was found not by light, but by a wobbling star.

Black Hole

3C 273 The first quasar. Its discovery revealed feeding black holes across the universe.

8 in-depth guides, with every fact labeled and sourced. Star any of them to build your own collection.

Looking for something we haven’t written up yet? The exoplanet database holds thousands more worlds, and Ask the Atlas can answer from everything we have.