First black hole Cygnus X-1 emits dancing jets at half the speed of light

Astronomers measured jets from Cygnus X-1 moving at about half the speed of light and carrying energy roughly equivalent to 10,000 suns, using combined radio-telescope images to track the jets' wobble.

Astronomers have measured the energy and motion of the jets from Cygnus X-1, the first confirmed black hole, using radio images combined from telescopes around the world. Cygnus X-1 is a stellar-mass black hole in a close binary with the blue supergiant HDE 226868. The pair orbit each other every 5.6 days while the black hole pulls gas into an accretion disk and launches two jets. The new analysis tracks how the jets wobble because of the system's orbital motion and reports the jets' energy and speed. Key details: - Cygnus X-1 is reported as about 21 times the mass of the sun and located roughly 7,000 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. - The black hole orbits its companion HDE 226868 every 5.6 days at about 0.2 astronomical unit. - The jets shine with an energy roughly equivalent to 10,000 suns and are measured at about 335 million mph (540 million km/h), about half the speed of light. - The jets appear to wobble, described by researchers as "dancing," because they are buffeted by winds and radiation from the companion star while the pair orbit a common center of mass. - The team combined radio-telescope images from multiple observatories to resolve the jets' shape and motion over time. - The study reports that roughly 10% of the energy released as matter falls toward the black hole is carried away by the jets, and the work was published April 16 in Nature Astronomy. Summary: This measurement offers an observational anchor for models of how jets carry energy away from accreting black holes and helps connect behaviors seen in stellar-mass and supermassive systems. Undetermined at this time.