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There are some articles in wikipedia with the list of known (or candidates) black holes here and list of nearest black holes. Also there is a map of Milky Way.

My question is where can I get approximate position of the known black holes in our Galaxy (Milky Way) as Galactic coordinate system or maybe some other galaxy coordinates?

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  • $\begingroup$ Do you mean positions in 3d? Or just positions in the sky in 2d Galactic coordinates? $\endgroup$
    – ProfRob
    Mar 7, 2018 at 10:25
  • $\begingroup$ If it's just 2D Galactic coordinates, then you can look up the objects on Simbad. (In fact, each of the objects in the second Wikipedia list has, on its own Wikipedia page, a link to the corresponding Simbad page (right-hand sidebar, under "Database references".) $\endgroup$
    – Peter Erwin
    Mar 7, 2018 at 10:45
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    $\begingroup$ I got one: 0.0.0 and it's big. $\endgroup$
    – ShadoCat
    Mar 7, 2018 at 18:06
  • $\begingroup$ @RobJeffries I am not sure. Which coordinates are most used for galaxy objects? $\endgroup$
    – Zlelik
    Mar 8, 2018 at 11:40
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    $\begingroup$ 3d positions is more interesting, but difficult, since an accurate distance to most of these objects is unknown. That will all change next month when Gaia-DR2 is released. $\endgroup$
    – ProfRob
    Mar 8, 2018 at 11:56

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If I go from the list of black holes to the page of a particular object like this there is a link to SIMBAD database like this. This SIMBAD database has galactic coordinates in this format

Gal coord. (ep=J2000) : 209.9563 -06.5399 [ 100 12 0 ]

where 209.9563 is a Galactic longitude, which changes from 0 to 360 degrees. -06.5399 is Galactic latitude, which is always around zero (+/- 10 degrees), because our galaxy is almost flat. Good explanation for galactic coordinates is on this wikipedia page.

To put the object on 2D map like this only Galactic longitude and distance to the object is needed. For example, this is the map of all black holes which I could find in wikipedia in our Galaxy.

enter image description here

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    $\begingroup$ That map cannot be produced using just Galactic latitude and longitude. $\endgroup$
    – ProfRob
    Jan 25, 2022 at 6:48

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