RA 299.5903° · Dec 35.2016° · blackhole
8 more points to reach Anomaly.
Cygnus X-1 is an epic black hole. It lies about 7,240 light-years from Earth and sits in the constellation Cyg.
Gas spiralling in is squeezed and heated to millions of degrees before it falls, so the disc around it blazes brighter than anything else in the neighbourhood.
Look for Cygnus X-1 in the constellation Cyg.
Like any astronomical target, Cygnus X-1 is best seen from a dark site away from city lights, and when it is above the horizon depends on your latitude and the time of year. The visibility panel above works out tonight's viewing window for your saved location.
Cygnus X-1 scores 70 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the epic tier. Another 8 points would lift it into a rarer tier.
That score comes from 6 science badges — Black hole, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Has a proper name, Stellar-mass black hole, X-ray binary: stripping a living star and Spinning near the limit — each earned for a real, measurable property of the object. Rarity on Spacedle is never random: the more remarkable an object's astrophysics, the more badges it collects, the higher it scores, and the rarer it ranks.