Cygnus X-3

StarDate

It would be fascinating to get close to Cygnus X-3. Unfortunately, it also would be deadly. The system is bathed in X-rays and ultraviolet radiation. It features powerful “jets” that blast into space like energy cannons. And it probably has a black hole – a one-way trip to oblivion.

Cygnus X-3 is in the swan, which swoops across the eastern sky on these early summer evenings. The system itself is too faint to see. In fact, we can’t see its visible light even with the largest telescopes because it’s hidden behind thick clouds of dust.

But we can see it in other wavelengths, including X-rays, gamma rays, and radio waves. Those forms of energy have allowed astronomers to piece together the system’s likely story.

Cygnus X-3 probably consists of a black hole plus a brilliant companion. The companion probably is a dozen or more times the Sun’s mass, and a couple of hundred thousand times its brightness.

The bright star is blowing huge amounts of gas into space. The black hole grabs some of the gas, which forms a spinning disk around the black hole. Some of the gas is funneled into high-speed jets that fire into space. One of those jets is aimed almost directly at Earth.

The brilliant companion star is likely to explode in the next million years or so, with its core collapsing to form another black hole. But the blast might rip the system apart – perhaps causing Cygnus X-3 to fade away.

Script by Damond Benningfield