by MarkBour » Thu Jun 29, 2017 4:57 pm
The video that Art shared had some very nice imagery. Watching it, I have the impression that you can almost see the interstellar material at times (I mean the gas that would be in and around the two stars, evidently predominantly flowing from the red giant to the white dwarf). It would be fascinating to be able to actually "see" the gas being captured into an accretion disk by the compact partner. I don't know which ranges of detection would be most helpful, but that video was from Chandra observations, which means X-Rays. I also get the impression from this mess that there are often jets of gas blown out of the dwarf companion (constantly?), which can relieve the situation before a nova occurs, but evidently sometimes too much builds up and it has gone to nova.
As to the second video, so, Jack Lemmon is kind of like a jet that often blows off some of the accretion in a steadier release, whereas Walter Matthau occasionally lets loose with a full-on nova, right?
The video that Art shared had some very nice imagery. Watching it, I have the impression that you can almost see the interstellar material at times (I mean the gas that would be in and around the two stars, evidently predominantly flowing from the red giant to the white dwarf). It would be fascinating to be able to actually "see" the gas being captured into an accretion disk by the compact partner. I don't know which ranges of detection would be most helpful, but that video was from Chandra observations, which means X-Rays. I also get the impression from this mess that there are often jets of gas blown out of the dwarf companion (constantly?), which can relieve the situation before a nova occurs, but evidently sometimes too much builds up and it has gone to nova.
As to the second video, so, Jack Lemmon is kind of like a jet that often blows off some of the accretion in a steadier release, whereas Walter Matthau occasionally lets loose with a full-on nova, right?