Energetic gamma rays spotted from ‘microquasar’

This caught my eye from New Scientist, about a microquasar that those of you into space and science like I am will enjoy reading about. Part of:

Cygnus X-3, a pair of objects that sit some 30,000 light years from Earth, has long been a puzzle. The system is thought to contain the dense remnant of a star – either a black hole or a neutron star – that is feeding on a disc of material stolen from a companion star.

The pair orbit each other once every 4.8 hours, shining in X-rays and occasionally sending jets of material, or flares, outwards at close to the speed of light. Because of these flares, Cygnus X-3 has been dubbed a “microquasar”, since it resembles quasars, the flaring supermassive black holes at the centres of some galaxies.

Interest in Cygnus X-3 has grown since the flares were first discovered by radio telescopes in 1972. In the following decades, astronomers have found hints that gamma rays – the universe’s highest-energy photons – could be coming from Cygnus X-3 with energies as high as trillions or even quadrillions of electronvolts (eV).

There are also some interesting theories out there connected to Cygnus X-3 …