A massive jet ejection event from the microquasar SS 433 accompanying rapid X-ray variability

Microquasars occasionally exhibit massive jet ejections that are distinct from the continuous or quasi-continuous weak jet ejections. Because these massive jet ejections are rare and short events, they have hardly been observed in X-rays so far. In this paper, the first X-ray observation of a massive jet ejection from the microquasar SS 433 with the Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) is reported. SS 433 undergoing a massive ejection event shows a variety of new phenomena, including a QPO-like feature near 0.1 Hz, rapid time variability, and shotlike activities. The shotlike activity may be caused by the formation of a small plasma bullet. A massive jet may consist of thousands of such plasma bullets ejected from the binary system. The size, mass, internal energy, and kinetic energy of the bullets and the massive jet are estimated.