A binary system containing a massive star and what is probably a black hole, and which together are a source of intense X-rays, has been shown to be a smaller-scale example of some of the most luminous quasars in the universe.
The new findings, from an international team that used NASA's Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer spacecraft (IXPE), describe how an X-ray binary system located about 24,000 light-years away in our Milky Way galaxy is amplifying its X-ray emission in a funnel-shaped cavity that encircles the probable black hole.
