Word: cygnus
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...classic, Piglet was left virtually speechless by his run-in with what he thought was the mysterious Heffalump. Now astronomers can share his bafflement as they grope for words to describe their own strange encounter. Off in the distant heavens, among a grouping of stars that the ancients called Cygnus (the Swan), they seem to have found a celestial version of a Heffalump. It is a cosmic beast of such enormous gravity that it appears to be tugging, stretching and, indeed, slowly gobbling up its giant companion, a massive star more than 20 times the size of the sun. Like...
Riccardo Giacconi, professor of Astronomy, said yesterday he and others have researched a black hole named Cygnus X-1, which has a smaller mass than the alleged black hole observed last week...
...clouds of interstellar space (TIME cover, Dec. 27). Now, they may have a chance to observe a delivery. Scientists from the University of Arizona and NASA'S Ames Research Center at Mountain View, Calif., announced last week that they have identified a discshaped object in the constellation Cygnus that is not only an evolving star, but could well be a sun in the process of forming its own planets. Their discovery could furnish scientists with an opportunity to study planetary formation and figure out how the sun's children-including earth itself-developed...
Because black holes emit no light or other radiation, their existence, predicted by the laws of relativity, cannot be confirmed by direct observation, but it can be inferred. Astronomers have identified a powerful X-ray source in the constellation Cygnus. Some suspect the source, which has been labeled Cygnus Xl, may be just such a black hole. It appears to be rotating with a visible star around a common center of gravity−a dead partner of a dualstar system. Scientists believe material from the glowing star is being drawn into the black hole with such force that the material...
...gases from the star. As those gases spiraled toward the black hole, they would collide, compress and heat up to as high as 100 million degrees-enough to produce an intense flow of X rays. Recent findings by NASA'S new Copernicus earth satellite strongly support this scenario. Cygnus X-l shows a sharp decrease in X-ray emissions every 5.6 days. That, according to optical astronomers, seems to be the time it takes the bright star's unseen companion to make one trip around it. In other words, every 5.6 days the black hole passes behind...