Discovery of a bow shock around Vela X-1

Details Discovery of a bow shock around Vela X-1 Discovery of a bow shock around Vela X-1

1996-11-04

arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9611017v1

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

14 pages, latex (including style file), 3 postscript figures, ApJ Letters, in press

Scientific paper

10.1086/310454

We report the discovery of a symmetric bow shock around the well-known high-mass X-ray binary (HMXB) Vela X-1. Wind bow shocks are a ubiquitous phenomenon around OB-runaway stars, but now such a structure is found around a HMXB. The presence of a bow shock indicates that the system has a high (supersonic) velocity with respect to the interstellar medium. From the symmetry of the bow shock, the direction of motion and, moreover, the origin and age of the system can be derived. Our observation supports Blaauw's scenario for the formation of an OB-runaway star by the supernova explosion of the binary companion.

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