Black holes · Stellar-mass black hole
Cygnus X-1
7,200 light-years · Light crosses it in 418 millionths of a second
- Across
- 125 km
- Vs Earth
- 0.98% of Earth
- Mass
- 21 Suns
Open Cygnus X-1 in Cosmic Scale
About
Cygnus X-1 is a black hole of about 21 Suns locked in a 5-day orbit with a blue supergiant star. Gas streaming off the companion spirals in, heats to millions of degrees and glows in X-rays, which is how it was found in 1964 by a detector carried above the atmosphere on a sounding rocket.
The first object widely accepted as a black hole, it pulls gas off a blue supergiant companion.
At a glance
| Mass | 21 Suns |
|---|---|
| Distance | 7,200 light-years |
| Companion | Blue supergiant, 40 Suns |
| Orbit | 5.6 days |
Did you know
- Stephen Hawking bet Kip Thorne that it was not a black hole, as insurance against his own life's work being wrong. He conceded the bet in 1990.
- Its event horizon is only about 125 km across, but you would need to look from within a few thousand kilometres to see it bend light.
- The gas reaches roughly 10 million degrees before it crosses the horizon.
Simulations
- How black holes are made — How the core of a giant star falls in on itself and closes off from the universe
- Two black holes merge — How two black holes spiral together, shake space itself and were heard on Earth 1.3 billion years later
- White hole — The mirror image of a black hole: how one could be made, and what it would look like
- Warp drive — Carrying a ship faster than light by moving space itself: what it would take, and the view from inside
- Hawking evaporation — A black hole's slow glow and last flash: how it would end, and what it would look like