RA 253.5006° · Dec -39.8458° · blackhole
15 more points to reach Anomaly.
GRO J1655-40 is an epic black hole. It lies about 11,000 light-years from Earth and sits in the constellation Sco.
Gas spiralling in is squeezed and heated to millions of degrees before it falls, so the disc around it blazes brighter than anything else in the neighbourhood.
Look for GRO J1655-40 in the constellation Sco.
Like any astronomical target, GRO J1655-40 is best seen from a dark site away from city lights, and when it is above the horizon depends on your latitude and the time of year. The visibility panel above works out tonight's viewing window for your saved location.
GRO J1655-40 scores 63 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the epic tier. Another 15 points would lift it into a rarer tier.
That score comes from 6 science badges — Black hole, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), On the zodiac, Stellar-mass black hole, X-ray binary: stripping a living star and Firing a relativistic jet — each earned for a real, measurable property of the object. Rarity on Spacedle is never random: the more remarkable an object's astrophysics, the more badges it collects, the higher it scores, and the rarer it ranks.