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I posted this questions in Physics stack:

"I am searching for a catalog, list, database, etc. That should show astronomical observations of known black hole candidates. I am primarily interested in knowing the mass of these candidates.

I have found this paper: https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2016A%26A...587A..61C/abstract

but I am curious if more recent work is available or something more complete has been done. Ideally I'd like to get data on the ALL known black hole candidates in the universe, so both black holes in our own galaxy and black hole candidates that might be at the center of other galaxies."

Someone gave me this link:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_massive_black_holes#References and someone else noted that I should ask it here, and think they were right, but now I'm more confused. I see similar questions on this site:

Is there a comprehensive catalog of all known black holes?

Catalogue of black holes

but they are a few years old. It seems like the catalogs that do exist themselves are about 20 yrs old. Is there a standard webpage or even Living Review type of document where new sources get added?

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    $\begingroup$ The first catalog "BlackCAT" is being kept up-to-date and new sources are being added there. $\endgroup$
    – SpaceCore
    Commented 2 days ago

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There is (at least for stellar mass black hole candidates).

The BlackCAT catalogue, as stated in the abstract of the first reference you cite:

The complete version of this catalogue will be continuously updated at https://www.astro.puc.cl/BlackCAT and in the Virtual Observatory, including finding charts and data in other wavelengths.

Here is a plot of the cumulative frequency of discoveries. Red is all candidates, identified by their X-ray properties; blue are the ones dynamically confirmed to be black holes (more massive than neutron stars).

cumulative frequency of black hole discoveries

Note, the catalogue does not contain the LIGO gravitational wave mergers.

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  • $\begingroup$ Thanks @ProfRob! I was curious if there is something similar to this for IMBH or SMBH? Also this paper does seem to focus on X-ray sources. I know LIGO is picking up some BH sources, but is looking at X-ray sources limiting in some way? Or is there some know rule like, 95% of BHs will be found using X-rays? $\endgroup$
    – tau1777
    Commented yesterday
  • $\begingroup$ @tau1777 sounds like another Q. There are only a couple of stellar BHs that have been found dynamically. All the rest are X-ray or GW sources. $\endgroup$
    – ProfRob
    Commented yesterday
  • $\begingroup$ Thanks again @ProfRob. $\endgroup$
    – tau1777
    Commented 18 hours ago

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