Jorge Casares (Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Spain)
“Observations of Galactic Black Holes”

Over the past 50 years, X-ray astronomy has led to the discovery of stellar-mass black holes, mostly in transient X-ray binaries.
While new black holes are routinely detected by X-ray satellites, optical/near-infrared techniques are needed to measure their masses. I will summarise the progress made in the search and characterisation of stellar-mass black holes in the Milky Way, with a focus on new strategies that have been proposed to reveal a large fraction of the hidden population.