An artist’s impression of the Cygnus X-1 system, with the black hole appearing in the center and its companion star on the left. New measurements from Cygnus X-1, reported Nov. 3 in the journal Science, represent the first observations of a mass-accreting black hole from the Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) mission, an international collaboration between NASA and the Italian Space Agency. (Image: John Paice)
Researchers’ recent observations of a stellar-mass black hole called Cygnus X-1 reveal new details about the configuration of extremely hot matter in the region immediately surrounding the black hole.
Matter is heated to millions of degrees as it is pulled toward a black hole. This hot matter glows in X-rays...
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