Latest Cygnus constellation Stories
For the first time, astronomers have produced a complete description of a black hole, a concentration of mass so dense that not even light can escape its powerful gravitational pull. Their precise measurements have allowed them to reconstruct the history of the object from its birth some six million years ago. Using several telescopes, both ground-based and in orbit, the scientists unraveled longstanding mysteries about the object called Cygnus X-1, a famous binary-star system discovered...
ESA's Integral gamma-ray observatory has spotted extremely hot matter just a millisecond before it plunges into the oblivion of a black hole. But is it really doomed? These unique observations suggest that some of the matter may be making a great escape. No one would want to be so close to a black hole. Just a few hundred kilometers away from its deadly surface, space is a maelstrom of particles and radiation. Vast storms of particles are falling to their doom at close to the speed of...
NASA reported on Thursday that its Kepler spacecraft discovered a planetary system with two planets crossing in front of the same star. This is the first planetary system discovered with more than one planet transiting in front of the same star. The two planets were named Kepler-9b and 9c. The findings were published in Thursday's issue of the journal Science. Kepler's camera measures tiny decreases in the stars' brightness that occurs when a planet transits in from of them. This...
About 550 light-years from Earth, a star like our Sun is writhing in its death throes. Chi Cygni has swollen in size to become a red giant star so large that it would swallow every planet out to Mars in our solar system. Moreover, it has begun to pulse dramatically in and out, beating like a giant heart. New close-up photos of the surface of this distant star show its throbbing motions in unprecedented detail."This work opens a window onto the fate of our Sun five billion years from now,...
NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has made the first unambiguous detection of high-energy gamma-rays from an enigmatic binary system known as Cygnus X-3. The system pairs a hot, massive star with a compact object -- either a neutron star or a black hole -- that blasts twin radio-emitting jets of matter into space at more than half the speed of light.Astronomers call these systems microquasars. Their properties -- strong emission across a broad range of wavelengths, rapid brightness...
WASHINGTON -- NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has made the first unambiguous detection of high-energy gamma-rays from an enigmatic binary system known as Cygnus X-3. The system pairs a hot, massive star with a compact object -- either a neutron star or a black hole -- that blasts twin radio-emitting jets of matter into space at more than half the speed of light. Astronomers call these systems microquasars. Their properties -- strong emission across a broad range of wavelengths, rapid...
NASA's new exoplanet-hunting Kepler space telescope has detected the atmosphere of a known giant gas planet, demonstrating the telescope's extraordinary scientific capabilities. The discovery will be published Friday in the journal Science."As NASA's first exoplanets mission, Kepler has made a dramatic entrance on the planet-hunting scene," said Jon Morse, director of the Science Mission Directorate's Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Detecting this...
Astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have discovered a planet somewhat larger and more massive than Neptune orbiting a star 120 light-years from Earth. While Neptune has a diameter 3.8 times that of Earth and a mass 17 times Earth's, the new world (named HAT-P-11b) is 4.7 times the size of Earth and has 25 Earth masses.HAT-P-11b was discovered because it passes directly in front of (transits) its parent star, thereby blocking about 0.4 percent of the star's light....
A team of astronomers from The Netherlands and the UK has discovered a vast "˜jet-powered bubble' formed in the gas around a black hole in the Milky Way.  The discovery means that for decades scientists have been severely underestimating how much power black holes pump back into the universe instead of merely swallowing material across their event horizons.Jets of energy and particles flowing outwards at close to the speed of light are a common feature of all accreting black holes,...
NASA -- A NASA-funded astronomer has discovered a world where the sun sets over the horizon, followed by a second sun and then a third.The new planet, called HD 188753 Ab, is the first known to reside in a classic triple-star system."The sky view from this planet would be spectacular, with an occasional triple sunset," said Dr. Maciej Konacki (MATCH-ee Konn-ATZ-kee) of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif., who found the planet using the Keck I telescope atop...
Latest Cygnus constellation Reference Libraries
Cygnus Constellation -- Cygnus (the swan) is a northern constellation. It was one of Ptolemy's 48 constellations, and is also one of the 88 modern constellations. Because of the pattern of its main stars, it is sometimes called the Northern Cross (in contrast to the Southern Cross). The bird extends over the summer Milky Way, appearing to fly south. Notable features Cygnus contains several bright stars. Deneb, α Cygni, is an extremely brilliant star, very prominent...
Cygnus X-1 -- Cygnus X-1 (often abbreviated to Cyg X-1) is an X-ray source in the Cygnus constellation considered to be one of the most likely black hole candidates. The optical counterpart (HDE 226868) is a variable 8.9 magnitude star (visible with good binoculars in good observing conditions.) at right ascension 19 h 56.5 min and declination of 35 deg 4 min (for 1950 epoch). Cyg X-1 is a binary star that contains a O9-B0 supergiant (with a surface temperature of 31000 Kelvin) and a...
