Neutron Star Behaves Like a Mini-quasar - by spacewriter
By taking advantage of the wobble it experiences, Kosec’s team got measurements of the wind from different perspectives. The result is a two-dimensional map of the wind’s vertical shape and structure. The measurements also tracked varying wind velocities at different lines of sight, ranging from 250-800 km/sec. The team’s analysis suggests the wind variations are connected to the disk wobble. It appears that the wind “structure” precesses along with the disk.
The observations showed signs of disk winds at changing heights, rather than at a single, fixed height above a uniformly rotating disk. The X-ray emissions and absorption lines revealed the temperature and density of the winds at various heights above the disk. That data was then used to construct a two-dimensional map of the wind’s vertical structure. “What we see is that the wind rises from the disk, at an angle of about 12 degrees with respect to the disk as it expands in space,” Kosec says.
At first glance, the wind action around Hercules X-1 seems similar to what happens around supermassive black holes in the cores of galaxies. Quasars, for example, have these embedded black holes with winds blowing off their accretion disks. For most accretion disk systems, however, astronomers have very limited points of view. They don’t always get to see one wobbling, as Hercules X-1 does.
Kosac points out that if astronomers can map disk winds around a variety of objects, from neutron stars to quasar cores, it could give them a lot more insight into how these objects influence their surroundings. They could play a role in shaping other actions in the universe at large. To find out more, astronomers need to measure more wobbling systems. Mapping them could give insight into how disk winds influence the formation and evolution of stellar systems.
It’s not completely clear how the winds get started in the first place. In an X-ray binary system, they could be the result of radiation from the neutron star heating up and evaporating the surface of the disk. The material could shred off the disk and create gusty winds. Or, the tremendously strong magnetic field of the neutron star could be shredding the disk and blasting material out to space. These latest MIT observations could provide a valuable tool for analyzing how all such winds form.
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