Does Anyone Understand SS 433?
Abstract
SS 433, a source of radio emission as well as X-rays which lies in the presumed supernova remnant W50, has a visible and infrared output of unusual variability, an unlikely increase in redness as brightness increases, and possibly hosts a neutron star. Most notably, having not only 'stationary' emission lines, but lines that are both redshifted and blueshifted (the degree of which varies periodically over 164 days, with an apparent 13-day period of precession), SS 433 appears to be simultaneously approaching and receding from earth at speeds up to 25,000 kilometers per second. To explain this observation, a kinematic model of SS 433 has been proposed, whereby a rotating neutron star, accompanied by a normally evolving F star, is propelling two jets of gas at 80,000 kilometers per second in opposite directions, the jets having temperatures of only a few thousand degrees, thus being very well collimated. However, the unexplained source of the energy output of SS 433, which is about 100 times that of the Crab nebula, is of main scientific concern.
- Publication:
-
Sky and Telescope
- Pub Date:
- December 1979
- Bibcode:
- 1979S&T....58..510O
- Keywords:
-
- Astronomical Models;
- Astronomy;
- Radio Sources (Astronomy);
- Stars;
- Supernova Remnants;
- X Ray Sources;
- F Stars;
- Infrared Spectra;
- Light (Visible Radiation);
- Neutron Stars;
- Red Shift;
- Stellar Luminosity;
- Stellar Spectrophotometry;
- Variability;
- Astrophysics