SS 433 is a microquasar or eclipsing X-ray binary system, consisting of a stellar-mass black hole accreting matter from an A-type companion star.

SS 433's designation comes from the initials of two astronomers at Case Western Reserve University: Nicholas Sanduleak and Charles Bruce Stephenson.

[12] Precession means that the jets sometimes point more towards the Earth, and sometimes more away, producing both blue and red Doppler shifts in the observed visible spectrum.

This does not represent an actual velocity of the system away from the Earth; rather, it is due to time dilation, which makes moving clocks appear to stationary observers to be ticking more slowly.

[9] In September 2018, A. U. Abeysekara et al. published in Nature details of investigations using the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov Gamma-Ray (HAWC) Observatory in Mexico.

[20] In his novel House of Suns, Alastair Reynolds describes a fictional star in the Andromeda galaxy as "a close cousin" to SS 433.