Credit: NASA/CXC/U.Amsterdam/S.Migliari et
Coming and Going in X-rays
The star called SS 433 is sometimes called "the star that's coming and going".
The star astonished astronomers by showing
doppler-shifted emission lines in its spectrum, which is not so unusual, but
in the case of SS 433 the emission lines were coming from material rapidly
approaching us, and at the same time, rapidly receding from us. This unusual
state of affairs is produced by 2 jets emanating from a black hole in orbit
around another "normal" star. The jet pointing towards us produces highly
blueshifted emission, and the jet pointed away from us produces highly
redshifted emission. The material in these jets are very hot and energetic and
produce a large amount of X-rays. This X-ray emission has now been resolved by
the Chandra X-ray observatory. The
inset image above is the Chandra image of SS
433, which clearly shows that the X-ray emission mostly originates from 2
bright lobes at the end of each jet. The image below is an artist representation
of the SS 433 binary system, showing jets produced from the accretion disk
around the black hole. These jets wobble or precess around the rotational axis
of the accretion disk. The Chandra image suggests that some process is
re-heating the material in the jet far from the black hole.
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Page Author: Dr. Michael F. Corcoran
Last modified December 15, 2002
