Nature of the secondary component of beta Lyrae.

Development of a hypothesis concerning the nature of the secondary component of beta Lyrae which is regarded as more plausible than the suggestion that this component is a black hole. Adopting Huang's (1962) and Woolf's (1965) basic model for beta Lyrae, it is suggested that the secondary star may be a massive 'main-sequence' star in rapid, nonuniform motion. Certain findings regarding mu Sco and V356 Sgr, which have primaries that are very cool and underluminous for their masses, are cited as evidence for such an inference, since their underluminosity is probably due to high angular momentum and they are normal enough not to be suspected of harboring a black hole.