Cygnus X-1 contains a 21-solar mass black hole -- implications for massive star winds
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
2021-02-19 v1
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 kiloparsecs. When combined with previous optical data, this implies a black hole mass of 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.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2102.09091,
title = {Cygnus X-1 contains a 21-solar mass black hole -- implications for massive star winds},
author = {James C. A. Miller-Jones and Arash Bahramian and Jerome A. Orosz and Ilya Mandel and Lijun Gou and Thomas J. Maccarone and Coenraad J. Neijssel and Xueshan Zhao and Janusz Ziółkowski and Mark J. Reid and Phil Uttley and Xueying Zheng and Do-Young Byun and Richard Dodson and Victoria Grinberg and Taehyun Jung and Jeong-Sook Kim and Benito Marcote and Sera Markoff and María J. Rioja and Anthony P. Rushton and David M. Russell and Gregory R. Sivakoff and Alexandra J. Tetarenko and Valeriu Tudose and Joern Wilms},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2102.09091},
year = {2021}
}
Comments
Published online in Science on 2021 February 18; Main (3 figures; 1 Table) + Supplementary (11 figures; 3 Tables)