Discovery of a massive unseen star in LMC X-3

Details Discovery of a massive unseen star in LMC X-3 Discovery of a massive unseen star in LMC X-3

Sep 1983

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1983apj...272..118c&link_type=abstract

Astrophysical Journal, Part 1 (ISSN 0004-637X), vol. 272, Sept. 1, 1983, p. 118-122. NSF-supported research.

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

153

Binary Stars, Black Holes (Astronomy), Magellanic Clouds, Stellar Mass, X Ray Sources, B Stars, Orbital Elements, Radial Velocity, Stellar Motions, Stellar Spectrophotometry

Scientific paper

Spectroscopic observations of the optical counterpart of LMC X-3 show it to be a spectroscopic binary in the Large Magellanic Cloud with an orbital period of 1.70 days. The B3 main-sequence primary has a large radial velocity amplitude indicating a mass function of 2.3 solar masses. LMC X-3 is an extremely luminous and variable X-ray source, but no 1.7 day X-ray periodicity has been detected. The lack of optical and X-ray eclipses limits the inclination to less than 70 degrees and implies a mass for the unseen star of more than 9.0 solar masses, if the B star has a normal mass. The system now appears to be the strongest evidence for the existence of a stellar mass black hole and is the first extragalactic example.

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