Its one of the strongest x-ray sources in the sky, and we now know it is powered by a stellar-mass black hole. Since it is only about 7,000 light-years away, it likewise gives astronomers an exceptional view of how stellar-mass black holes act.
The black hole itself is a 21 solar-mass excellent residue, and it orbits a 41 solar-mass companion star. Its an effective x-ray source because product from the star is captured into an accretion disk of the black hole, which superheats the material and creates jets of plasma that circulation away from the black hole.
For this research study, the group used data from the Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE), which can capture not simply x-rays but likewise their polarization. When they integrated this data with other observations of Cygnus X-1, they found the x-rays are emitted not from the areas along the jets, but from a 2,000 km area perpendicular to the jets. To put it simply, the accretion disk itself is the main x-ray source. This supports the model where the innermost region of the accretion disk is what powers a black holes jets.
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This X-ray image of Cygnus X-1 was taken by a balloon-borne telescope, the High Energy Replicated Optics (HERO) task. NASA image.
The team likewise discovered that the orientation of the accretion disk is tilted significantly relative to the orbital aircraft of the double star. It would be unusual for members of an excellent double star to have such varying rotational axes, so it is most likely that the shift occurred during the catastrophic explosion that formed the great void.
Understanding that the x-ray source is reasonably near to the black hole, astronomers can further study their characteristics to better comprehend how great voids affect the warping of space and time, which might lead to more stringent tests of basic relativity.
Reference: Krawczynski, Henric, et al. “Polarized x-rays constrain the disk-jet geometry in the black hole x-ray binary Cygnus X-1” Science (2022 ): 5399.
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Its one of the greatest x-ray sources in the sky, and we now understand it is powered by a stellar-mass black hole. Since it is just about 7,000 light-years away, it likewise offers astronomers an exceptional view of how stellar-mass black holes behave. The black hole itself is a 21 solar-mass excellent residue, and it orbits a 41 solar-mass buddy star. Its a powerful x-ray source because material from the star is recorded into an accretion disk of the black hole, which superheats the product and produces jets of plasma that flow away from the black hole.