system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Could satellites or planets orbit a black hole without being sucked into it and how far away of a black hole would they need to be to stay in orbit?
gpt
Yes.  If you replaced the Sun with a black hole of equal mass to the Sun, all the planets would remain in their current orbits. Orbits are determined by gravity, and gravity is dependent on mass. It's just that black holes are so dense that they occupy a small amount of space, which permits the gravity fields near the center of mass to get very strong (because gravity gets much stronger as distance to the center of mass decreases).