section_path: History/Observation
section_name: Observation
paragraph_text: Observation
  
  On 11 February 2016, the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo collaboration announced the first direct detection of gravitational waves, representing the first observation of a black hole merger. On 10 April 2019, the first direct image of a black hole and its vicinity was published, following observations made by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) in 2017 of the supermassive black hole in Messier 87 's galactic centre. As of 2023, the nearest known body thought to be a black hole, Gaia BH1, is around 1,560 light-years (480 parsecs) away. Though only a couple dozen black holes have been found so far in the Milky Way, there are thought to be hundreds of millions, most of which are solitary and do not cause emission of radiation. Therefore, they would only be detectable by gravitational lensing.