COBALTAstrophysics consortium

Exploring the unseen universe

Making the
darkness visible.

Finding hidden black holes through the light of their companion stars.

Explore the science Join the search
A black hole and its companion star A circular black hole and a larger star on opposite sides of their shared barycentre. Their elliptical orbits share this point as a focus. Body sizes are illustrative, not to scale.

A black hole/stellar binary can create gravitational self-lensing. Read more

The COBALT project

Welcome to the COBALT Website

The COBALT consortium is the brainchild of astrophysicist Dr Matt Middleton and is intended to exploit the science resulting from self-lensing searches in the near future.

01 / Research

The science of
self-lensing

How gravity bends starlight and reveals compact objects in binary systems.

Understand the physics ↗ 02 / Participate

Help find a
hidden black hole

Explore stellar light curves with the Black Hole Hunters citizen science project.

Discover the project ↗ 03 / Collaboration

Meet the
consortium

The researchers bringing together observations, theory, and data science.

Our members ↗

From the consortium

Latest news

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