APOD: SS 433: Binary Star Micro-Quasar (2020 Aug 31)

[APOD Robot]

SS 433: Binary Star Micro-Quasar

Explanation: SS 433 is one of the most exotic star systems known. Its unremarkable name stems from its inclusion in a catalog of Milky Way stars which emit radiation characteristic of atomic hydrogen. Its remarkable behavior stems from a compact object, a black hole or neutron star, which has produced an accretion disk with jets. Because the disk and jets from SS 433 resemble those surrounding supermassive black holes in the centers of distant galaxies, SS 433 is considered a micro-quasar. As illustrated in the animated featured video based on observational data, a massive, hot, normal star is locked in orbit with the compact object. As the video starts, material is shown being gravitationally ripped from the normal star and falling onto an accretion disk. The central star also blasts out jets of ionized gas in opposite directions – each at about 1/4 the speed of light. The video then pans out to show a top view of the precessing jets producing an expanding spiral. From even greater distances, the dissipating jets are then visualized near the heart of supernova remnant W50. Two years ago, SS 433 was unexpectedly found by the HAWC detector array in Mexico to emit unusually high energy (TeV-range) gamma-rays. Surprises continue, as a recent analysis of archival data taken by NASA's Fermi satellite find a gamma-ray source -- separated from the central stars as shown -- that pulses in gamma-rays with a period of 162 days – the same as SS 433's jet precession period – for reasons yet unknown.

<< Previous APOD

This Day in APOD

Next APOD >>

[bystander]

viewtopic.php?t=40907

[Ann]

A speaker's voice, telling us what we are seeing, would have been nice.

Let me try to unravel it. The first seven seconds of the video shows us the black hole accreting matter from the hot (yellow!! ) star.

From 8 to 15 seconds into the video we see the SS 433 system from above (I think??), and we see its jet being bent into a spiral shape. I think????

16 seconds into the movie, we see what is clearly two jets on opposite sides of the black hole. The jets move more or less straight, but irregularities in the surrounding nebula make the jets form "helix shapes" as they speed away. Couldn't find a helix shape, but these "bent out of shape arrows" will have to do. ⬿ ⤳

Or, wait! Maybe the helix shape of the jets is not due to irregularities in the nebula, but to the precession of the SS 433 system itself!

24 seconds into the movie we get a view of the micro-quasar from a distance, and we really see those helix-shaped jets. At the same time we see the vicinity of the black hole flickering like crazy. Is that the accretion disk flickering? Or the innermost parts of the jets?

32 seconds into the movie we see a blue nebula (I know, I know, it's false color) and a normal-looking star in the middle of it (and never mind the pink color of that star). Near the top of the blue cloud is a bright light that beats like a heartbeat, pretty slowly, and grows very much brighter or fainter in time with the beats.

And then, stop. The end.

An artistic view of SS 433 and Fermi J1913+0515 within W50 nebula is shown. Image Credit: DESY, Science Communication Lab

---

Also check out the link that bystander provided us with, viewtopic.php?t=40907. It takes us to an item of breaking science news about SS 433 and a mysterious gamma-ray emitting source, Fermi J1913+0515, inside the nebula W50 that SS 433 and Fermi J1913+0515 are both located in.

Take a look at the picture at right. It shows us SS 433, with its wiggly jets, and another source in the lower right part of the image. That source is called Fermi J1913+0515. and it emits gamma rays in time with the pulsating of SS 433, even though Fermi J1913+0515 is located some 100 light-years away from the micro quasar.

Is the gamma-ray emitting source, Fermi J1913+0515, a part of the video that is today's APOD? Is the bright "star" - maybe not a star? - that we saw not too far from SS 433 in the blue cloud in the last part of the video really Fermi J1913+0515? Don't ask me, I'm still scratching my head.

Ann

[orin stepanek]

Too much power for me! Too bad man can't harness it yet; but knowing man; some future time he may try!

[Chris Peterson]

Too much power for me! Too bad man can't harness it yet; but knowing man; some future time he may try! :mrgreen:

What would we do with it? Our own puny little sun already provides vastly more power than we can use, readily accessible with technology we already have. Something that spits out all of the energy we'd ever need every few seconds seems like a bit of... overkill.

[Sa Ji Tario]

Orin, Roger Penrose already calculated and designed it, before working with S. Hawking

[orin stepanek]

Too much power for me! Too bad man can't harness it yet; but knowing man; some future time he may try!

What would we do with it? Our own puny little sun already provides vastly more power than we can use, readily accessible with technology we already have. Something that spits out all of the energy we'd ever need every few seconds seems like a bit of... overkill.

Ya! I was Just kinda day dreaming of what man may advance to someday! I agree; way overkill X overkill!

[TheZuke!]

A speaker's voice, telling us what we are seeing, would have been nice.

Morgan Freeman was not available at the time.

Let me try to unravel it. The first seven seconds of the video shows us the black hole accreting matter from the hot (yellow!! ) star.

It looks to me like the hot star knows what's going to happen and has its engines on full, trying to get the heck out of there!

[BDanielMayfield]

This system fits the old adage 'truth is stranger than fiction.'

[De58te]

I find the gamma ray pulse being an 162 day period interesting. Just 3 or 4 days ago I read in the news that the fast radio burst FRB 121102 has returned as predicted, with a period of 161 days. Is it just a coincidence of the 161 day period? Wonder how far apart the location of these two objects are?

[tmcdanel]

Ann: "24 seconds into the movie we get a view of the micro-quasar from a distance, and we really see those helix-shaped jets. At the same time we see the vicinity of the black hole flickering like crazy. Is that the accretion disk flickering? Or the innermost parts of the jets?"

I don't understand the physics of this at all. Would one actually see this over time, like some directional star getting pulled back and forth, or is it a symbolic representation of a pulse..?

I get the strangeness of it though.

[johnnydeep]

I find the gamma ray pulse being an 162 day period interesting. Just 3 or 4 days ago I read in the news that the fast radio burst FRB 121102 has returned as predicted, with a period of 161 days. Is it just a coincidence of the 161 day period? Wonder how far apart the location of these two objects are?

That's pretty interesting. But SS 433 is a mere 18000 ly away, and this https://www.rt.com/news/498853-fast-rad ... t-woke-up/ says:

First discovered in 2012, the FRB [121102] is located in a dwarf galaxy 3 billion light-years away making it very difficult to monitor, requiring some of Earth’s most powerful instruments.

[johnnydeep]

Too much power for me! Too bad man can't harness it yet; but knowing man; some future time he may try!

What would we do with it? Our own puny little sun already provides vastly more power than we can use, readily accessible with technology we already have. Something that spits out all of the energy we'd ever need every few seconds seems like a bit of... overkill.

Ya! I was Just kinda day dreaming of what man may advance to someday! I agree; way overkill X overkill!

Perhaps by the time humanity manages to limp its way to SS 433 at 18000 ly distant, we will have the technology to utilize it to power our next jump to a further destination Though there is a black hole only 1000 ly away that might be easier for us to get to and use...somehow: https://www.space.com/closest-black-hol ... overy.html:

A newfound black hole may be the closest black hole to Earth, and you can spot its cosmic home in the night sky without a telescope.

The black hole, which is lurking 1,000 light-years from Earth in the southern constellation of Telescopium, belongs to a system with two companion stars that are bright enough to observe with the naked eye. But you won't be able to see the black hole itself; the massive object has such a strong gravitational pull that nothing — not even light — can escape it.

Astronomers discovered this black hole while studying what they thought was just a binary star system, or two stars that orbit a common center of mass. They were using the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile to observe the binary, known as HR 6819, as part of a broader study on double star systems. When they analyzed their observations, the researchers were shocked to learn that a third object was hiding in the system: a black hole.

[neufer]

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

The Mystery of SS433 by Larry Krumenaker

<<Many years ago, my summer job was to spend hours peering through a microscope at photographs of the universe taken not with film but with glass plates. [One] particular star southwest of Altair ... was really dim -- much too faint to see with the average telescope. What set it apart from other stars was that its H-alpha line was three to four times wider than average. What could I be seeing? Several stars with H-alpha emission on top of each other? A flaw in the glass plate? Checking other plates showed the star and the funny line, always wide, always the same brightness. Unfortunately, glass plates are great survey tools, but not too good for details. A larger telescope was required to investigate further, but that wasn't an option at the time. I gave the strange object a name, K16 -- "K" from my family name, Krumenaker.

I published the information in a 1975 article in Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, and kept this object and all the others in a project folder until I could get my hands on a bigger telescope. In 1977, K16 became known as SS433 when Case Western Reserve University astronomers Bruce Stephenson and Nick Sanduleak listed it as the 433rd object in their catalog of objects with emission lines in their spectra.>>

[neufer]

24 seconds into the movie we get a view of the micro-quasar from a distance, and we really see those helix-shaped jets. At the same time we see the vicinity of the black hole flickering like crazy. Is that the accretion disk flickering? Or the innermost parts of the jets?

The Mystery of SS433 by Larry Krumenaker

<<Today we know that SS433 consists of a pair of jets on opposite sides of a central system. This system consists of a compact object -- a huge black hole, a regular black hole, or a neutron star -- orbiting every 13 days around a bloated star that dumps gas toward the compact object. The gas temporarily resides in a thick, slightly wobbly accretion disk that causes a 6- to 6.5-day variation in radiation and is the source of the majority of the visible light seen as a "star" on photographs.>>

[orin stepanek]

Perhaps by the time humanity manages to limp its way to SS 433 at 18000 ly distant, we will have the technology to utilize it to power our next jump to a further destination Though there is a black hole only 1000 ly away that might be easier for us to get to and use...somehow: https://www.space.com/closest-black-hol ... overy.html:

Ah! Your're a Dreamer Too!

[JohnD]

Dreaming is all very well, how about some science imagination?
So SS433 precesses at the same rate as a gamma ray source 100 light years from it. Coincidence, happenstance or enemy action, meaning causation?
Here on Earth, the Moon appears to be exactly the same size as the Sun, plus/minus accoridn to orbital varaiation. This is coincidence, as the Moon was further away in deep time, and has moved closer in as tidal effects slow it.

Do quasars slow down with deep time? As we don't know what the gamma source is, we should assume that its pulse rate may be constant, increase or decrease. And that it is another coincidence that today, the two rates are the same.

Otherwise, and there is no mention above, is the source in line with one of the jets? Then as the jet precesses, the source will be poked by a spray of high energy particles each rotation, stimulating a pulse. That would synchronise the pulses and rotation. If so, this may suggest what the gamma source is.
John

[Chris Peterson]

Dreaming is all very well, how about some science imagination?
So SS433 precesses at the same rate as a gamma ray source 100 light years from it. Coincidence, happenstance or enemy action, meaning causation?

Almost certainly coincidence.

Do quasars slow down with deep time? As we don't know what the gamma source is, we should assume that its pulse rate may be constant, increase or decrease. And that it is another coincidence that today, the two rates are the same.

Given that the location of the two appears to be coincident, it is likely that the common rates are related. Quasars do slow down over time as they lose energy to gravitational radiation.

[JohnD]

Eh, Chris??
"Almost certainly coincidence."
and
"it is likely that the common rates are related"
Backed up by another confounding statement, "Quasars do slow down over time" which makes my suggestion the more likely.

That they are linked by a causative mechanism is surely theoretical paradoelia! AKA 'dreaming'!
John

[RJN]

The discoverer of SS 433, Dr. Larry Krumenaker has emailed in! Although he is too modest to post about it here, an article discussing some of the history behind SS 433 can be found here: https://carinaemajoris.wordpress.com/20 ... -of-ss433/ .

Dr. Krumenaker now runs the website called The Galactic Times found here: www.thegalactictimes.com .

- RJN

[LKrumenaker]

Technically, the podcast The Galactic Times is at that website, and most podservices, Thanks for putting that up on my birthday LK

[JohnD]

Thank you RJN and even more, thank you, Dr.Krumenaker!

I thought that two objects 100 light years apart (according to the APOD blurb) varying with the same interval, were more likely to do so by coincidence, as their periods changed, so that they happened to coincide during our era, than because of some mutual mechanism.

Your most interesting account, linked to above, says there are "15,000" LYs between SS433 and W50, which surely makes a nechanism even more unlikely, but you also suggest that the two have a common origin, "SS433 and W50 probably are all that’s left of a once-normal binary-star system." Not that that makes a synchronous variance mechanism more likely.

Unless.... Is one of the jets directed at W50? As it sweeps across the cosmos, like a lawnsprinkler as you so graphicly describe, could the regular arrival of a storm of light speed particles cause W50 to pulse, in time with SS433?
John