🕳️ Black hole
Cygnus X-1
The first black hole ever confirmed, feeding on a nearby star.
- Mass
- 21 times the mass of the Sun
- Distance
- 7,200 light-years away
- Discovered
- Confirmed in the early 1970s
Did you know?
- It pulls gas off a giant blue star that circles it every 5.6 days.
Find it in the sky
The life of a starA step in a star’s life: a neutron star or a black hole
More NASA photos of Cygnus X-1Straight from NASA’s image library, in the app
Explore more
All of deep space
The Sun
Our star, an ordinary one that keeps everything here alive.
Betelgeuse
A red supergiant in Orion that will one day explode.
Alpha Centauri
The closest star system to the Sun.
Eta Carinae
A pair of giant stars, one of them about 90 times heavier than the Sun.
Mira
A red giant star racing through space with a tail like a comet.
Zeta Ophiuchi
A runaway star, flung out when its partner exploded.