Stellar orbits
Fast orbits around an unseen compact mass reveal the central black hole in the Milky Way.
Black-hole atlas
TON 618, Sagittarius A*, M87*, and major black-hole systems.
A curated atlas of named black holes and black-hole candidates, from nearby stellar binaries to ultramassive quasar engines, with separate pages, WebGL study scenes, and defensible scale notes.
TON 618 - Ultramassive quasar black-hole candidate
Featured extreme
TON 618
A luminous quasar powered by hot accreting gas around an extremely massive central compact object.
Scope control
What this atlas covers
The public universe contains thousands of black-hole candidates and many catalog-only entries. This atlas focuses on major named systems that are useful for study: horizon-imaged supermassive black holes, quasar engines, stellar X-ray binaries, dormant Gaia discoveries, and unusually massive galaxy-center candidates.
Black-hole Pages
Open a separate study page
Ultramassive quasar black-hole candidate
TON 618
About 10.4 billion light-years light-travel time; About 40 billion solar masses; literature estimates are model-dependent.
Canes Venatici - Distant quasar central engine
Milky Way central supermassive black hole
Sagittarius A*
About 26,700 light-years; About 4.3 million solar masses.
Sagittarius - Galactic-center compact radio source
Supermassive black hole
M87*
About 53.5 million light-years; About 6.5 billion solar masses.
Virgo - Giant elliptical galaxy nucleus
Stellar-mass black-hole X-ray binary
Cygnus X-1
About 7,200 light-years; About 21 solar masses.
Cygnus - Accreting compact object in a massive-star binary
Dormant stellar black hole
Gaia BH1
About 1,560 light-years; About 10 solar masses.
Ophiuchus - Nearby astrometric binary
Dormant stellar black hole
Gaia BH2
About 3,800 light-years; About 9 solar masses.
Centaurus - Wide astrometric binary
Stellar-mass black-hole X-ray transient
V404 Cygni
About 7,800 light-years; About 9 solar masses.
Cygnus - Variable accretion binary
Nearby stellar black-hole binary
A0620-00
About 3,500 light-years; About 6 to 7 solar masses.
Monoceros - Low-mass X-ray binary
Microquasar
GRS 1915+105
About 26,000 light-years; About 12 solar masses.
Aquila - Galactic relativistic-jet source
Stellar black hole in the Large Magellanic Cloud
LMC X-1
About 163,000 light-years; About 10 to 11 solar masses.
Dorado - Extragalactic X-ray binary
Very massive galaxy-center black hole
NGC 1277 black hole
About 220 million light-years; About 17 billion solar masses, estimate model-dependent.
Perseus - Compact lenticular galaxy nucleus
Coma-cluster central black-hole candidate
NGC 4889 black hole
About 300 million light-years; Often modeled around 20 billion solar masses, with wide uncertainty.
Coma Berenices - Giant elliptical galaxy nucleus
Ultramassive galaxy-center candidate
Holmberg 15A black hole
About 700 million light-years; Tens of billions of solar masses in published dynamical estimates.
Cetus - Galaxy-cluster central elliptical nucleus
Blazar and candidate binary supermassive black hole
OJ 287
About 5 billion light-years; Primary often modeled near 18 billion solar masses; binary interpretation remains model-based.
Cancer - Active nucleus with periodic outburst model
Black hole in an ultra-compact dwarf galaxy
Messier 60-UCD1 black hole
About 54 million light-years; About 21 million solar masses.
Virgo - Dense stellar system nucleus
Nearby supermassive black hole
NGC 3115 black hole
About 32 million light-years; About 1 billion solar masses.
Sextans - S0 galaxy nucleus
How Black Holes Are Found
Observation methods
Event-horizon imaging
Very-long-baseline radio arrays can reconstruct horizon-scale ring structure for nearby supermassive targets.
Binary motion
A visible companion can reveal a dark compact object if the orbit requires too much mass for a normal star.
X-ray accretion
Hot gas in close binaries produces high-energy emission and state changes.
Quasar spectra
Broad lines, luminosity, redshift, and accretion models estimate black-hole masses in distant active galaxies.
Astrometry
Precision star motion can reveal dormant black holes even when accretion is weak or absent.
Scale Notes
Do not mix these scales casually
Solar mass
Black-hole masses are usually compared with the Sun. Stellar black holes are tens of solar masses; galactic nuclei run from millions to billions.
Event horizon
Schwarzschild radius scales linearly with mass, but the visible accretion environment can be much larger.
Distance
Milky Way targets use light-years or parsecs. Quasars add cosmological redshift and lookback-time interpretation.
Model uncertainty
Extreme black-hole masses, especially in distant quasars and galaxy cores, carry method-dependent systematic uncertainty.
Mathematical model
Black-hole and accretion-disk model
Black-hole visuals use theoretical scaling equations for the event horizon, photon-ring marker, and optically thick accretion disk. They are educational WebGL approximations, not numerical general-relativistic ray-tracing renders.
Event-horizon scale
\[R_s=\frac{2GM}{c^2}\]
The black silhouette is scaled from the Schwarzschild radius relation. Mass changes the horizon scale through G, M, and c, not through image tracing.
Thin-disk temperature
\[T(r)^4 \propto r^{-3}\left[1-\sqrt{\frac{R_{\mathrm{in}}}{r}}\right]\]
The annular disk brightness and color are assigned from the standard steady thin-disk radial profile, so inner rings are hotter and outer rings cool by equation.
Keplerian disk flow
\[\Omega(r)=\sqrt{\frac{GM}{r^3}}\]
Orbiting gas is represented as differentially rotating annuli and flow bands. The visual proof is that angular speed decreases with radius as Keplerian motion requires.
Verification standard: the rendered object must be reproducible from stated equations, catalog parameters, or explicit geometric transforms. Visual reference images may inform presentation only; they are not the source of orbital positions, field vectors, accretion-disk gradients, timing, or engineering layout.
Limitations: browser scenes may use bounded scale, compressed distances, simplified two-body dynamics, schematic transfer curves, or educational approximations where full numerical ephemerides, CFD, finite-element models, or general-relativistic ray tracing are outside the page scope. Those simplifications are part of the model contract, not hidden image-based construction.