Scientists have detected jets in the gas disk of a neutron star system. Reported by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Sometimes stars in a binary system can initially be extremely uneven in mass. If one of them is too large, it will burn its fuel faster than a friend, glow as a supernova, and turn into a black hole or a neutron star. In this case, it begins to attract the matter of a lighter companion, as a result of which a gas cloud forms in the system. In the X-1 system in the constellation of Hercules, 21,000 light-years from Earth, this cloud has taken the form of a slightly “wobble” (moving) disk, allowing it to be “see” in all directions.
Thanks to this oscillation, astronomers led by Peter Kosek, research create a map of the disk and the jets created by it – the “wind” flows that move matter away from the disk. They managed not only to determine the three-dimensional shape of the disk, to establish the structure of these jets, but also to determine their speed – it can reach hundreds of kilometers per second.
To find out, astronomers spent several days observing the X-ray glow of the neutron star using the XMM-Newton and Chandra orbiting telescopes and watching how the X-1 emission spectrum changed as the disk “wobbled.” Each cycle lasts 35 days, after which the system returns to an indistinguishable state from the original.
The authors hope that their work will make it possible to understand the structure of quasars, similar, but larger systems, in which a supermassive black hole replaces a neutron star.
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