How far is a black hole to us? Gaia BH1 is the closest known black hole to Earth, located approximately 1,560 light-years away in the constellation Ophiuchus. Discovered by the Gaia space observatory in 2022, it is a dormant stellar-mass black hole orbited by a Sun-like companion star.
Gaia BH1 is a dormant stellar-mass black hole with about 9.62 solar masses. Unlike active black holes, it does not accrete matter and emits no X-rays, making it invisible except through gravitational influence on its companion star.