Clumps in the stellar wind of Vela X-1
Abstract
We present a detailed analysis of all public available INTEGRAL data of the HMXB pulsar Vela X-1. During the more active phases, Vela X-1 featured bright flares with a maximum intensity of more than 5 Crab, but at the same time also offstates during which the source was undetectable by INTEGRAL/ISGRI [1]. We interpret this behavior as a direct evidence for the strongly structured wind in Vela X-1. To study the flaring behavior, we performed a statistical analysis of the X-ray light curve. The resulting log-normal distributions show that also the mass of the clumps in the stellar wind is indeed log-normally distributed, as the X-ray intensity is a direct tracer of the mass accretion rate and thus also for the mass of the clumps.
- Publication:
-
X-ray Astronomy 2009; Present Status, Multi-Wavelength Approach and Future Perspectives
- Pub Date:
- July 2010
- DOI:
- 10.1063/1.3475186
- Bibcode:
- 2010AIPC.1248..169K
- Keywords:
-
- stellar winds;
- X-ray binary stars;
- solar flares;
- neutron stars;
- 97.10.Me;
- 97.80.Jp;
- 96.60.qe;
- 97.60.Jd;
- Mass loss and stellar winds;
- X-ray binaries;
- Flares;
- Neutron stars