Mass of black holes: The State of the Art

TL;DR

This review summarizes current methods and knowledge about measuring black hole masses across various cosmic environments, highlighting the wide mass range and importance for multiple astronomical disciplines.

Contribution

It provides an overview of the state of the art in black hole mass measurement techniques and their applications in different astrophysical contexts.

Findings

Black holes are found in diverse environments including binary systems, globular clusters, and galaxy centers.

Black hole masses span about ten orders of magnitude.

Accurate mass measurement is crucial for understanding astrophysical processes.

Abstract

In this small review we present the actual state the knowledge about weighting black holes. Black holes can be found in stellar binary systems in our Galaxy and in other nearby galaxies, in globular clusters, which we can see in our and nearby galaxies, and in centres of all well-developed galaxies. Range of values of their masses is wide and cover about ten orders of magnitude (not taking into account the hypothetic primordial black holes). Establishing the presence of black holes, and in particular the measurement of their mass is one on the key issues for many branches of astronomy, from stellar evolution to cosmology.