It's probably best to start in our solar system. We live in the thin spiral galaxy the Milky Way (not the candy bar that's a lot smaller)on the Orion arm. The Earth may seem big to us but if we were to look at Earth from even the closest galaxy you would have a seriously hard time spotting even our galaxy.
This is called a nebula. These are the results of a star dying or colliding they are swarming particles of matter that can have a permanent shape or can change shape as though a gas.
When people think of black holes they usually think of a black tornado in space. Well it's far from that. all a black hole is is an immense and dense amount of gravity. black holes cannot be near anything at all or it would be crushed and stretched. heres how it works:
the gravitational pull is so strong that half of your body
that's closest will be taken by this much gravity and
the other half would be taken by slightly less gravity
which would tear your body apart.this is an animation of how black holes can be considered literal bends of space and time
