I've been playing around with SE a lot lately and have really been enjoying it so far. Some of the neater things I've found I've been posting in the image dump thread. Lately I've been searching for black holes, and so far haven't found any. I did a search and found a thread about how to find them, where people mentioned changing the star scale to max, and then using the map to search for the smallest "stars"; and also to slowly fly to the center of globular clusters until one appears. I have tried both of these with no success. Could someone perhaps walk me through this process? Using the map in particular is a little confusing to me, it seems like there just a hundred thousand labels on screen that I have to sift through. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Just do a local search by clicking the star browser button (the button with a bunch of dots located on the left of the screen) and click search. Black holes are marked with X, while neutron stars are marked with Q.
You will usually find about 2 black holes on average in 100 stars (correct me if it is more) and 2 neutron stars as well. This is a great way to find solitary objects or objects with a brown dwarf in binary, but locating objects where the black hole is a secondary is a bit harder.
Alternatively, just find a globular cluster or galaxy and click shift-g.
Wow! I can't believe there has been a star browser button sitting there the whole time which I have NEVER used! Talk about making life easier, I have just been clicking on random stars this entire time and hoping for the best. Already found a few black holes. Thanks for the help!