I recently encountered my first black hole, on my way out to Jaques Station. I knew it was coming, as I'd specifically selected it as the end of one of the legs on my journey, but that did not make my arrival to it any less hair-raising.
This is because, upon emerging from witch-space, when I checked my navigation scanner I found that I was mere megameters away from it.
I didn't even bother turning to enjoy the view at that moment – I just pointed my main thrusters at it and hauled myself out to at least a dozen light-seconds away before stopping.
When I could finally start breathing easy, I did dare to venture a bit closer. However, I'd quit the game of "interstellar chicken" whenever my scanners changed their measurement unit from light-seconds to megameters. (I think that's usually at several hundred Mm.)
The gravitational lensing of a black hole is certainly more spectacular as you get closer to it. So I would love to be able to get even closer, to observe the maximum effect. But, knowing the nature of a black hole, this is not something I want to casually risk doing. (At least, not while I'm thousands of Ly outside the bubble.)
So, what's the closest distance that can be considered "safe" for observation of a black hole? If this varies by the size of the black hole, is there a way I can derive it from scan data? Are there other signs I can look for, to know when I'm approaching the safety limit before I breach it?
Best Answer
Fortunately (or unfortunately) depending on your outlook, Frontier did not model black hole behavior accurately. You can approach it just like any other stellar object(that's not a star) and be pretty OK.
to prove this, several CMDRs flew through a black hole.