The system includes a normal star paired with a dark and massive object such as a neutron star or black hole that is ejecting two high-speed jets of material. But when a NASA satellite picked up an intense burst of X-rays from the star early last week, CI Cam thrust itself into the center of an astronomical debate about how binary star systems evolve. Wagner found that the coordinates of the radio signals matched the location of CI Cam. He and Sumner G. Starrfield, a professor of physics and astronomy at Arizona State University, quickly recorded its spectrum with the Perkins 72-inch telescope at Lowell. The star also appeared about 10 times brighter than normal.
Decades can elapse between such events.
We don't know yet which one. But CI Cam is very different from many other binaries we know that have neutron stars or black holes. That is in part because CI Cam's X-ray burst peaked 10 hours after it began, and then faded away almost completely over the next two days. None of us expected that, because typical X-ray novae have outbursts that last for about a year, so the brief outburst was an indication that something is very different about this one. He theorized that CI Cam must be an old, giant star that blasts its companion with streams of atomic material in a dense wind.