Cygnus X-1 is a galactic X-ray source in the constellation Cygnus. It was the first such source widely accepted to be a black hole. The compact object is estimated to have a mass about 14. 8 times the mass of the Sun. It is located about 6,070 light-years from the Sun in a binary system.
About Cygnus X-1 in brief
Cygnus X-1 is a galactic X-ray source in the constellation Cygnus. It was the first such source widely accepted to be a black hole. The compact object is now estimated to have a mass about 14. 8 times the mass of the Sun. It is located about 6,070 light-years from the Sun in a binary system. A stellar wind from the star provides material for an accretion disk around the source. Matter in the inner disk is heated to millions of degrees, generating the observed X-rays. A pair of jets, arranged perpendicularly to the disk, are carrying part of the energy of the infalling material away into interstellar space. It may have formed from a progenitor star that had more than 40 solar masses. The majority of the star’s mass was shed, most likely as a stellar wind. If this star had then exploded as a supernova, the resulting force would most likely have ejected the remnant from the system. Hence the star may have instead collapsed directly into a blackhole. This hypothesis lacks direct empirical evidence but has generally been accepted from indirect evidence. It has been shown to be too small to be any known kind of normal star, or other likely object besides a black Hole. If so, the radius of its event horizon has 300 km. It remains among the most studied astronomical objects in its class. In April–May 1971, Luces Braes and George Kiley from the National Astronomy Observatory detected radio emission from the source and their accurate radio pinpointed the source to the star AGK2+35E68 =226868.
On the same day, Robert M. Hjellming and George M. Leiden Observatory independently detected the radio emission of the source, and independently pinpointed its position to AGK 2+35K2+. On the following day, the National Radio Astronomy observatory detected radio emitters from the Xgnus X-1 source and pinpointed it to the stars HDE 26868 = 226868+. On April 35th, 1971, NASA launched their Uhuru Satellite in 1970, which led to the discovery of 300 new X-Ray sources. The Extended Uhuru observations showed that the energy generation must take place over a relatively small speed of roughly 105 times a second, as the speed of light restricts communication between more distant regions of the sky. In 1964, a survey was conducted in 1964 using two Aerobee suborbital rockets. As a result of these surveys, eight new sources of cosmic X- rays were discovered, including Cyg XR-1 in the constant of CygnUS. The celestial coordinates of this source were estimated as right ascension 19h53m and declination 34. 6°. It was not associated with any especially prominent radio or optical source at that position. In 1990, Stephen Hawking and Kip Thorne bet that it was not a black holes.
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This page is based on the article Cygnus X-1 published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 06, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
