<div><span style="font-size: 1rem;">Astronomers have discovered the closest known black hole to Earth, just 1,600 light-years away.</span><br></div><div><br></div><div>Scientists reported Friday that this black hole is 10 times more massive than our sun. And it’s three times closer than the previous record-holder.</div><div><br></div><div>It was identified by observing the motion of its companion star, which orbits the black hole at about the same distance as Earth orbits the sun.</div><div>The black hole was initially identified using the European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft, said Kareem El-Badry of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.</div><div><br></div><div>El-Badry and his team followed up with the International Gemini Observatory in Hawaii to confirm their findings, which were published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.</div><div><br></div><div>The researchers are uncertain how the system formed in the Milky Way. Named Gaia BH1, it’s located in the constellation Ophiuchus, the serpent-bearer. - AP</div><div><br></div><div>bnbd24/fas</div>