The nearest known black hole to Earth, discovered in 2022, is Gaia BH1.
Gaia BH1 is a dormant stellar-mass black hole in the constellation Ophiuchus, roughly 1,560 light-years away. It was identified in data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission, which measures the positions and motions of stars with exceptional precision. Rather than detecting bright X-rays from matter falling into the black hole, astronomers inferred its presence from the unusual motion of a Sun-like companion star orbiting an unseen massive object.
The system’s two components circle each other about every 186 days. The black hole has a mass of roughly 10 Suns, while its companion is a G-type main-sequence star. Because the black hole is not actively feeding, it produces little detectable radiation, making its gravitational influence the key evidence.
Gaia BH1 replaced older record-holders such as V616 Monocerotis and Cygnus X-1 as the nearest known black hole. “Known” is important: many more black holes may exist closer but remain invisible because isolated or dormant black holes are extremely difficult to find.