Cygnus X-3, Massive X-Ray Binary, Celestial Pole Star, Deneb
Cygnus X-3Located 37, 000 light years away in the constellation Cygnus, which straddles the galactic plane, is a powerful x-ray source named Cygnus X-3. Although it is only the third brightest x-ray source in the constellation after the famous Cygnus X-1, it is much further away on the far side of the galaxy and is obscured by intervening interstellar gas and dust near the galactic plane. When this is factored in, it appears to be one of the two or three most luminous objects in the galaxy in intrinsic brightness. It has received attention because it is one of the few sources of ultra-high energy cosmic rays with energies in the 100 - 1000 TeV range. But its most unique aspect is the production of anomalous cosmic ray events in a proton decay detector deep in Minnesota's Soudran iron mine. These events have defied analysis and have led to questions about whether Cygnus X-3 is a standard neutron star or perhaps something more exotic, like a star made of quarks. Cygnus X-3 is a compact object in a binary system which is pulling in a stream of gas from an ordinary star companion. Cygnus X-3 has distinguished itself by its intense X-ray emissions and by ultrahigh energy cosmic rays. It also made astronomical headlines by a radio frequency outburst in September 1972 which increased its radio frequency emissions a thousandfold. Since then it has had periodic radio outbursts with a regular period of 367 days. These flares are of unknown origin, but they are exceedingly violent events. Naval Research Laboratory observations in October 1982 using the Very Large Array detected the shock wave from a flare; it was expanding at roughly one-third the speed of light. Cygnus X-3 has an orbital period about its companion of only 4.79 hours. Intriquing underground events in the Soudron iron mines in October 1985 included 60 anomalous muon events in a 3¡ cone around Cygnus X-3 with a precise period of 4.79 hours, so they clearly came from that source. But that requires a neutral particle traveling at almost precisely the speed of light, and there are no reasonable candidates for such a particle. | Index | ||
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Cygnus X-3 Cosmic RaysDeep in the caverns of the Soudron iron mines are massive detectors designed to measure proton decay. They also measure some background cosmic ray events which can penetrate the thick layer of rock above the detector. Out of 1200 such events measured in a period during October 1985 were 60 anomalous muon events in a 3¡ cone around Cygnus X-3 with a precise period of 4.79 hours, so they clearly came from that source. Cygnus X-3 has an orbital period about its companion of only 4.79 hours. But no known particles can produce such events! Muons themselves are too short-lived to have traveled 37,000 light years so they must be secondary. The particles must be neutral to arrive with that precise directionality. They must be traveling at the same speed, essentially the speed of light, and there are no reasonable candidates for such a particle. The possibilities are neutrinos, photons, and high energy neutrons. Neutrinos are ruled out by the loss of the signal at the horizon, the photon flux is 300 times too small, and neutrons are unstable and wouldn't survive the trip. | Index | ||
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Want to watch Cygnus X-3/ Deneb's x-ray transient activity?
Quote from Bestowic on March 9, 2020, 12:10 am
Holy CRAP! This is getting freaky. I CANNOT BELIEVE that all this talk about Cygnus, and X-3/ Deneb has brought me FULL CIRCLE to Herouni! I mean what are the chances that the same person who built the antenna that can disprove the Big Bang, Cosmic Microwave Background, which Robitaille is trying to get back to operational status (because it's the least noisy radio antenna on EARTH!) is the guy proving that ancient monolithic sites point to Deneb??? Bestowic, you rock and this has me feeling like I'm playing a part in the freaking DaVinci Code. The difference is that this is real. Just wow.
I've included an image of this amazing star that was revered by the ancients. While I think I may know the reasons, I'm not sharing them here at this time. What a blue beauty.
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7,500-YEAR-OLD STONE CIRCLE IN ARMENIA ALIGNED TO CYGNUS'S BRIGHTEST STAR
A Report by Andrew Collins, 20.04.10
A new study into Armenia's Carahunge stone circle complex, has shown that it is arguably one of the oldest known megalithic sites outside of Turkey, dating to around 5500 BC. Moreover, investigations by Russian prehistorian Professor Paris Herouni indicate that Carahunge (car means "stone" in Armenian, and hunge means "voice" or "sound"), located some 200km from the Armenian capital Yerevan, not far from the town of Sisian, was created as an astronomical observatory marking the movement not only of the sun and moon, but also the stars.
Indeed, Herouni's work at Carahunge was impressive enough to draw in the expertise of the late Professor Gerald Hawkins, who was impressed by the thoroughness of the survey undertaken by his Russian colleague.
Key hole to Cygnus
More significant is that Carahunge's principal stellar alignment is towards Deneb, the bright star in the constellation of Cygnus the swan.
A number of the standing stones bear smooth angled spy holes that are 4 to 5cm in diameter, each one being angled towards different points on the horizon or ancient targets in the heavens.
A key stone had a hole that was focused due north towards the meridian. This suggested that it targeted a bright star at its culmination - i.e. the highest or lowest point it reaches as it revolves around the north celestial pole.
One of the holed stones at Carahunge aligned to celestial events and key stars. | Herouni ran the angle of the stone through various astronomical programmes and found that it was aligned to Deneb at a date of around 5,500 BC, suggesting that this was the time frame in which Carahunge was in use by an advanced society of astronomer priests. It was this alignment that provided the key to finally dating the site, which was expected to have been constructed during this distant epoch. |
It is even now being claimed by Professor Herouni that Carahunge is the oldest stone obervatory in the world, although surely the stone setting at Nabta Playa in Egypt's Libyan desert is at least as old as Carahunge, and arguably older. Plus there are my own findings with respect to the orientations of various Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) sites in southeast Turkey, including the 12,000 year old Gobekli Tepe. In The Cygnus Mystery (2006) I demonstrated that, like Carahunge, they seemed to be orientated towards Cygnus's brightest star, Deneb.
The importance of Professor Herouni's findings regarding Carahunge is that in a time frame little different to the Neolithic city of Catal Huyuk in neighbouring Turkey, there was an astronomical observatory in Armenia not just aligned to the sun and moon, but also to the stars, and Cygnus in particular. I suspect that the interest in this star group goes back beyond the PPN sites of southeast Turkey to the Palaeolithic age, and the peoples who created the amazing cave art in Western Europe. Representations of Cygnus certainly exist in the Lascaux cave in the Dordogne region of southern France, and I suspect it is present in various other painted caves as well.
So why was Cygnus important?
Primarily it is because of its use as a time marker, its stars being so close to the north celestial pole they move very little across hundreds of years. Then there is its position on the Milky Way, exactly where this starry stream bifurcates to form what is known as the Cygnus Rift or Dark Rift. Universally, this area of the sky has been seen as the point of access into the sky-world, as well as a place of cosmic birth and death. It was also the place where the souls of the dead travelled in the afterlife, very often accompanied by, or in the form of, a bird, seen as a psychopomp, a soul carrier. Very often the identity of these birds corresponded with how the stars of Cygnus were represented in regional mythologies - a falcon in Egypt, a vulture on the Euphrates and a swan in Hellenic Greece and Turkey.
I am not surprised that Carahunge is aligned to Cygnus, although it is always pleasing when one's theories are shown to be real. I think that in years to come we shall find a lot more about the cult of the swan, and its relationship to the earliest sky-religions of the ancient world. I also think there is much more to learn about the prehistoric beliefs of the proto Armenians, and how they held true age old beliefs that went back all the way to Palaeolithic times.
Cover of Herouni's new book. Please excuse the poor quality image. | Armenia and Old Armenia Professor Herouni has published a book of his findings with respect to Carahunge. Entitled ARMENIANS AND OLD ARMENIA ", it provides compelling evidence that this impressive megalithic site of over 200 standing stones spread out across 7 hectacres, was constructed and used by an advanced civilization. The book provides a detailed explanation of how the stone monument works as an astronomical observatory, and explains its context as the foundation point of Armenia and Armenian history. |
For the full story of Professor Herouni's discoveries at Carahunge, read the article below by Armenia Now reporter Gayane Mkrtchyan.
The Lost World: New book places the birth of civilization in Carahunge
By Gayane Mkrtchyan
ArmeniaNow Reporter
A new book claims that Armenia’s Carahunge observatory is evidence of the world’s oldest civilization. Scientist and radio physicist Paris Herouni argues in “Armenians and Old Armenia” that an advanced civilization existed in Armenia 7,500 years ago. Herouni, a graduate of Radiotechnical Department of Moscow Power Institute has 350 published scientic works, including monographs and 23 patents. Since 2000 he is a member of the group “People to People Ambassador” USA, which includes 30 top scientists of the world.
Herouni, 72, says that he was not attempting to gain fame or revolutionize history with his book, published in December 2004. Through scrupulous study, he says, he reached the conclusion that the stone circle at Carahunge is proof that Armenia’s civilization predates the Egyptians and Sumerians by 2,500 years.
“There are magnificent buildings in the world – the pyramids of Egypt, Stonehenge, wonderful temples in South American rainforests, which were created at least 6-15,000 years ago. Who are their authors? The world doesn’t know,” he says.
“Scientists find that all of those are the result of a developed culture, but they don’t know where that culture came from. This book gives an answer: Carahunge explains that 7,500 years ago Armenians possessed a stable and extensive knowledge. They knew that the Earth was round, knew its sizes. They knew that the Earth is rotating around its axis, as well as the laws of the movement of the cone-shaped axis, known as precession.”
Every year since 1994 Herouni has organized scientific expeditions at his own expense to study Carahunge, which is situated near the town of Sisian, 200 kilometers south-east of Yerevan. It is made up of hundreds of vertically standing stones of which 223 were numerated by Herouni’s scientific expedition. Of these, 84 stones have holes measuring 4-5 centimeters in diameter and prepared with care, pointing in different directions. Carahunge consists of 80 stone telescopic tools, which have preserved their precision. Herouni says that one can use them for work even today.
“By the precession laws of the Earth’s axis, using four telescopic methods, I calculated Carahunge’s age. It turned out to be 7,500 years old. This figure always terribly surprises everyone, because the most ancient civilization is believed by historians to have begun 5,000 years ago, and Carahunge had already a developed civilization some 2,500 years before that,” he says. After making his research and calculations, in 1999 the scientist got in touch with Prof. G. S. Hawkins in Washington, who is regarded as the world’s foremost specialist on stone monuments. Hawkins has been involved in studies of Stonehenge for all his life.
Herouni says that he was particularly interested in Hawkins’ opinion and soon he got the professor’s conclusion: “I admire the precise calculations you have made.” Hawkins acknowledges that Carahunge is 7,500 years old. “I am most impressed with the careful work you have done, and hope that the result will ultimately get recorded in literature,” Hawkins wrote in his letter.
Carahunge is 3,500 years older than England’s Stonehenge and 3,000 years older than the Egyptian pyramids. The total area of the observatory is 7 hectares. According to the scientist’s findings, a temple consisting of 40 stones built in honor of the Armenians’ main God, Ari, meaning the Sun, is situated in the central part of Carahunge. Besides the temple, it had a large and developed observatory, and also a university that makes up the temple’s wings.
Herouni shows photographs shot from a helicopter and says: “This is the central circle with 40 stones, which are without holes, these are the southern and northern wings. Soon this territory will be fenced and will be turned into a museum. Carahunge is situated at a height of nearly 1,750 meters, in a plane area.”
The stones of Carahunge are made of basalt. Each of them weighs up to 10 tons. Those stones without holes make up one tool together with those having holes in them. Over millenniums the stones became worn and grown over with thick layers of moss. However, Herouni says that the holes have been rather well preserved since they were cleanly processed once. The holes are telescopic tools that look at different points on the horizon.
Showing the photographs, Herouni explains in detail: “Often you look through holes at some point of the zenith and see nothing, but in the past according to the law of precession, a star rose or passed through there. Knowing the laws of precession, I set forth formulas in my book and knowing today’s positions of the stars, their coordinates, I count back and see that once a star appeared or went down from that same place. It is those calculations that allow me to decide the age.”
He says that the brightest star of the constellation of the Swan, Alfa, whose name is Deneb, passed through Carahunge’s zenith 7,630 years ago. Carahunge’s scientists had enough time both to build tools and work with them. And to achieve all that, they had already gone the way of sufficient development. According to Herouni, when Armenia embraced Christianity, Carahunge had already operated for 5,800 years.
“The observatory’s scientists knew the planets of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter. They knew about the solar system 6,000 years before Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Newton. Carahunge proves that 7,500 years ago mathematics, technologies, a form of written language were developed in Armenia, as well as a state with a thousand-year-long history, with laws and order,” says Herouni.
Carahunge literally means sounding stones. The scientist is convinced that they had a lot to say to people and continue to say today. Herouni explains that the “ch” phoneme gradually changed into “j”. He also says that there is a similarity in the names of the observatories of Stonehenge in England and Calenish in Scotland.
Herouni himself named the observatory Carahunge in 1994. Carahunge village is situated 30 kilometers from the observatory near the town of Goris. There are two Carahunge villages also in Artsakh and Herouni has started to research the origin of the villages’ names.
“I understood that when Armenia embraced Christianity, when temples were being ruined, monuments were being destroyed and books were being burned, people barely had time to run away and so they founded villages with similar names in remote places,” he says.
“In Carahunge many stones are broken, uprooted. There are also many standing stones, some of the holes of which are broken, there are half-finished tools. It can be felt that they suddenly stopped the work.”
It is mentioned in the book that besides Carahunge Armenians also had standing stones near the large village of Kaghzvan situated in Turkey to the west of Mount Ararat, again with holes, which bore pre-Christian crosses on them. Herouni got the photographs of the stones from his Dutch friends, who had climbed Mount Ararat.
The book “Armenians and Old Armenia” consists of three parts. The first is Carahunge, the second is devoted to the analysis of the Armenian language, and the third part is the history of Armenia beginning from the 40,000th year up to the adoption of Christianity. The book is published in 2,000 copies, most of which are sent abroad. Herouni finds that restoring Armenian history means restoring the authenticity of the world’s history.
Paris Herouni has quite serious scientific achievements in the main scientific directions – in the spheres of radio-physics, radio-engineering, radio-astronomy. Herouni’s scientific trends are recognized and are being applied in developed countries.
For more information on Carahunge go to
Waiting for Cynus X-3
February 25, 2000 -- Astronomers are increasingly convinced that supermassive black holes lie at the centers of most large galaxies. It's a classic case of truth being stranger than fiction. Gigantic disks of gas -- called accretion disks -- swirl around central black holes that weigh in at millions or even billions of solar masses. As gas in the accretion disk falls into the hole it heats up and glows so brightly in x-rays that we can detect them a billion light years away. The cores of these systems, called active galactic nuclei (AGNs), outshine all of the stars in the host galaxy by factors of 10 to 1000.
About 10% of all AGNs are stranger still. They produce narrow beams of energetic particles and magnetic fields, and eject them outward in opposite directions away from the disk at nearly the speed of light. When one of these beams is pointed toward Earth, it looks especially bright and astronomers call it a blazar. Among all AGNs, blazars can be detected over the widest range of frequencies, from radio waves to gamma rays.
Many aspects of blazars remain a mystery. What accelerates the material in the jets to relativistic speeds? How are the jets collimated? What are they made of?
The answers to some of these questions about distant galaxies may lie right here in our own Milky Way, in the binary star system Cygnus X-3.
"Cygnus X-3 is a black hole or a neutron star that's accreting matter from an companion star," explains Mike McCollough of the NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center. "Because of the deep gravity well, a huge amount of energy can be released in x-rays and gamma-rays. It's also a very bright radio source that undergoes massive flares from time to time."
During an intense flare in 1997, McCollough and colleagues made a high-resolution radio map of Cygnus X-3 using the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), a continent-sized radio interferometer.
"When we looked at the images, lo and behold, there was definitely a one-sided radio jet, about 50 milliarcseconds long," recalled McCollough. "Two days later it extended to 120 milliarcseconds and then it disappeared. This likely makes Cyg X-3 a galactic blazar -- a jet source where we were looking straight down the jet."
Left: An artist's concept of a high-mass x-ray binary system like Cygnus X-3. Gas from a massive star feeds the accretion disk of an orbiting black hole or neutron star. The accreting gas heats up and shines brightly as an X-ray source.
"Cygnus X-3 may be the first example of a blazar here in our own galaxy," he continued. "It's the only case known of a Wolf-Rayet star with a compact companion. Wolf-Rayet stars are massive stars -- 7 to 50 solar masses -- that have blown away their outer envelope of hydrogen. What's left is mostly helium. These types of stars have a very vigorous stellar wind, and that's probably what's driving things in this source."
"We can't see Cygnus X-3 optically because it's in the galactic plane where optical extinction by interstellar dust obscures the source. Fortunately, we can see it at infrared (IR) wavelengths and that's how we know it's a Wolf-Rayet star, from the IR spectral lines. Modulation of the IR and the X-ray emission gives us the orbital period of the binary, only 4.8 hours."
The next opportunity to study Cygnus X-3 during a bright flare may be just around the corner. McCollough and colleagues believe that another eruption is imminent.
"Just before a major flare, the radio and hard X-ray emission from Cygnus X-3 drops very low and stays there for days or weeks." explained McCollough. "It's as if something is building up before the explosion. This lets us predict major flares. On February 18 the radio emission from Cygnus X-3 dropped to very low levels and it's stayed there since. The hard X-ray (20-100 keV) emission which BATSE [on the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, pictured right] usually detects from this source also vanished in late January. We believe this is the precursor of some major activity."
Right: The Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (CGRO) was the most massive instrument ever launched by a NASA Space Shuttle in 1991. Astronomers using CGRO data continue to make important discoveries, including mysterious gamma-ray bursts that uniquely illuminate the early universe and a whole new class of QSOs. The CGRO will be one of the primary satellites observing Cyg X-3 when that binary system erupts. McCollough also uses the Burst and Transient Source Experiment (BATSE) on CGRO to monitor precursor activity.
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When Cygnus X-3 does erupt, McCollough is ready. He has been granted "Target of Opportunity" time to observe Cyg X-3 with the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, and the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer. When Cygnus X-3 erupts -- any day now, says McCollough -- all of these spaceborne observatories will turn toward the X-ray source and begin collecting critical data at X-ray and gamma-ray wavelengths.
Radio astronomers are also on standby. McCollough and colleagues are currently monitoring Cyg X-3 using the Green Bank interferometer in West Virginia, the Ryle telescope in Britain, the RATAN 600 radio telescope in Russia, and the Very Large Array in New Mexico. All of these instruments will spring into action when the flare begins. McCollough and his collaborators have been granted observing time as well on the Very Long Baseline Array, which will monitor Cyg X-3 for three days after the flare to make detailed radio images of the jet.
Left: One of the VLBA antennas at Caltech's Owens Valley Radio Observatory. Others are located at sites ranging from Hancock, New Hampshire to Mauna Kea, Hawaii. Together these antennas combine to form a powerful radio interferometer than can make detailed maps of celestial objects like Cygnus X-3.
"We expect to learn a lot," says McCollough. "If there really is a relativistic jet in Cyg X-3 we might get a glimpse of how it works. Some models predict matter-antimatter production in the jet. The Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory will be able to detect the spectral line at 511 keV that results from electrons and positrons annihilating one another. Jets like these might also entrain matter from the accretion disk or the stellar wind. If that happens we might be able to see that material by means of spectral line emission at x-ray energies. What we proposed to do with Chandra -- and this has just been approved -- is to use one of the high resolution spectrometers to look for spectral lines from entrained gas. If we see anything, the data will provide redshifts and composition. We'll actually measure the speed of the jet and what it's made of!"
We will also look for GeV emission (high energy gamma-rays) with the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory," concluded McCollough. "Since extragalactic blazars are known produce high-energy gamma rays, so might a galactic one."
Stay tuned to Science@NASA as the explosive story of Cygnus X-3 unfolds, with reports about the impending flare and updates about what scientists learn from their observations.
source: NASA.gov
High Mass X-Ray Binary, Cygnus X-3 (Deneb)... Is it about to return to an active state?
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Bright star Deneb transits at nightfall
- Oct 25 - Oct 31
Each year around October 24, the northernmost star of the famous Summer Triangle, Deneb, transits – climbs to its highest point in the sky – around 6:30 p.m. local time (7:30 p.m. local daylight saving time). What does that mean for skywatchers? Only that this noteworthy star – this beloved member of the Summer Triangle – is shifting ever-westward each day in our sky as Earth travels around the sun. Its transit at dusk and nightfall is a hallmark of the year, marking a shift toward winter (or summer) on your half of the globe.
When the sun or a star transits, it resides at one of three places: at zenith (straight overhead), north of zenith or south of zenith.
At 45 degrees north latitude (St. Paul, Minnesota, and Turin, Italy), Deneb shines straight overhead when it transits.
At 40 degrees north latitude (Denver, Colorado, and Beijing, China), Deneb soars to its highest point (about 5 degrees north of zenith) as evening dusk is giveing way to nightfall.
EarthSky lunar calendars are available! They make great gifts. Order now. Going fast!
The meridian is the imaginary semicircle that arcs across the sky from due north to due south. The sun or any star climbs to its highest point for the day when it crosses your meridian.
At temperate latitudes in the Southern Hemisphere, where it’s now springtime, Deneb transits at or near the same hour by the clock (near 6:30 p.m. local time). Yet, the sun sets later by the clock at more southerly latitudes, so in the Southern Hemisphere, Deneb at this time of year actually transits when the sun is still up, instead of at dusk/nightfall.
At more northerly or southerly latitudes, Deneb either transits to the north or to the south of the zenith point. Appreciably south of 45 degrees north latitude, Deneb lies to the north of the zenith point when it transits; conversely, when Deneb transits at latitudes appreciably north of 45 degrees north latitude, Deneb is viewed in the southern sky.
Two brilliant stars – Vega and Altair – team up with Deneb to complete the humongous Summer Triangle. The luminous Summer Triangle asterism, or star formation, can often be seen in a twilight sky or even from a light-polluted city.
The Great Rift of the Milky Way passes through the constellation Cassiopeia and the Summer Triangle. Click here for a larger photo.
From mid-northern latitudes, the far-northern stars Deneb and Vega are seen at the “top” of the Summer Triangle whereas the southernmost star Altair is seen at the “bottom.” From the Southern Hemisphere, it’s the other way around: Altair reigns at top and Deneb at bottom. It’s a matter of perspective.
Vega, the Summer Triangle’s westernmost star, is seen to the right of Deneb from mid-northern latitudes. From the Southern Hemisphere, on the other hand, Vega lies to the left of Deneb.
Around the world, the stars of the Summer Triangle transit some four minutes earlier with each following day (or two hours earlier with each following month). So, from northerly latitudes, the Summer Triangle is destined to shift over into the western sky at nightfall as autumn ebbs toward winter … or, for those in the Southern Hemisphere, as spring blooms into summer.
Bottom line: As darkness falls in mid-October, the star Deneb shines at the apex of the sky at mid-northern latitudes.
source: earthsky.org
