V404 Cygni is one of the most captivating black hole binary systems known to astronomers. Located approximately 7,800 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus , this system consists of a stellar-mass black hole and a companion star. The interactions between these two objects provide profound insights into the mechanisms of accretion, relativistic jet formation, and stellar evolution in the vicinity of a black hole. In this blog, we will explore the characteristics of both the black hole and the companion star within the V404 Cygni system, and how their interactions manifest in the observable universe. The Black Hole: A Compact Object of Extremes The black hole in V404 Cygni, with a mass roughly nine times that of the Sun, belongs to the class of stellar-mass black holes. These black holes are the remnants of massive stars that have undergone gravitational collapse after exhausting their nuclear fuel. The end state of such a star, having shed its outer layers in a supernova explos...
“The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can't imagine”