Cygnus X-1 contains a 21-solar mass black hole -- implications for massive star winds

2021/02/18 by James C. A. Miller-Jones, J. C. A. Miller‐Jones, Arash Bahramian +37 · 5 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #astro-ph.HE

paper · pdf · doi:10.1126/science.abb3363

Published online in Science on 2021 February 18; Main (3 figures; 1 Table) + Supplementary (11 figures; 3 Tables)

arxiv created 2021/02/18 · openalex publication_date 2021/02/18 · arxiv updated 2021/02/19 · openalex created_date 2021/03/01 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04

Abstract

The evolution of massive stars is influenced by the mass lost to stellar winds over their lifetimes. These winds limit the masses of the stellar remnants (such as black holes) that the stars ultimately produce. We use radio astrometry to refine the distance to the black hole X-ray binary Cygnus X-1, which we find to be 2.22^+0.18_-0.17 kiloparsecs. When combined with previous optical data, this implies a black hole mass of 21.2±2.2 solar masses, higher than previous measurements. The formation of such a high-mass black hole in a high-metallicity system constrains wind mass loss from massive stars.

Citations

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• Formation of a Black Hole in the Dark
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• Gaia Early Data Release 3: Parallax bias versus magnitude, colour, and position

Cited by

• A Novel Method of Modeling Extended Emission of Compact Jets: Application to Swift J1727.8-1613
• Observational Evidence for Cosmological Coupling of Black Holes and its Implications for an Astrophysical Source of Dark Energy
• On measuring the Hubble constant with X-ray reverberation mapping of active galactic nuclei
• A black hole detected in the young massive LMC cluster NGC 1850
• The INTEGRAL view on black hole X-ray binaries
• Cygnus (constellation) [wikipedia]

Related

• Fifty Years After the Discovery of the First Stellar-Mass Black Hole: A Review of Cyg X-1
• Spectroscopy of the stellar wind in the Cygnus X-1 system
• Constraining Mass of Cygnus X-1 from Analysis of the Hard State Spectral Data using TCAF Solution
• Implications of modern mass-loss rates for massive stars
• Weighing stellar - mass black holes with Gaia