Anisotropic winds in a Wolf-Rayet binary identify a potential gamma-ray burst progenitor

被引：30
作者：
Callingham, J. R. [1 ,2 ]
Tuthill, P. G. [2 ]
Pope, B. J. S. [2 ,3 ]
Williams, P. M. [4 ]
Crowther, P. A. [5 ]
Edwards, M. [2 ]
Norris, B. [2 ]
Kedziora-Chudczer, L. [6 ]
机构：
[1] Netherlands Inst Radio Astron, ASTRON, Dwingeloo, Netherlands
[2] Univ Sydney, Sch Phys, Sydney Inst Astron SIfA, Sydney, NSW, Australia
[3] NYU, Dept Phys, Ctr Cosmol & Particle Phys, 4 Washington Pl, New York, NY 10003 USA
[4] Univ Edinburgh, Inst Astron, Royal Observ, Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland
[5] Univ Sheffield, Dept Phys & Astron, Sheffield, S Yorkshire, England
[6] Univ New South Wales, Sch Phys, Sydney, NSW, Australia
来源：
NATURE ASTRONOMY | 2019年 / 3卷 / 01期
关键词：
PINWHEEL NEBULA; MASSIVE STARS; X-RAY; SYSTEM; ROTATION; 1ST; EVOLUTION; RATES; TIDES; ARRAY;
D O I：
10.1038/s41550-018-0617-7
中图分类号：
P1 [天文学];
学科分类号：
0704 ;
摘要：
The massive evolved Wolf-Rayet stars sometimes occur in colliding-wind binary systems in which dust plumes are formed as a result of the collision of stellar winds(1). These structures are known to encode the parameters of the binary orbit and winds(2-4). Here we report observations of a previously undiscovered Wolf-Rayet system, 2XMM J160050.7-514245, with a spectroscopically determined wind speed of similar to 3,400 km s(-1). In the thermal infrared, the system is adorned with a prominent similar to 12 '' spiral dust plume, revealed by proper motion studies to be expanding at only similar to 570 km s(-1). As the dust and gas appear to be coeval, these observations are inconsistent with existing models of the dynamics of such colliding-wind systems(5-7). We propose that this contradiction can be resolved if the system is capable of launching extremely anisotropic winds. Near-critical stellar rotation is known to drive such winds(8,9), suggesting that this Wolf-Rayet system may be a Galactic progenitor system for long-duration gamma-ray bursts.
引用
收藏
页码：82 / 87
页数：6
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