Variation of the Fe K Line Profile of Eta Carinae through the 2003 X-ray Minimum

Details Variation of the Fe K Line Profile of Eta Carinae through the 2003 X-ray Minimum Variation of the Fe K Line Profile of Eta Carinae through the 2003 X-ray Minimum

Sep 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006head....9.0306h&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, HEAD meeting #9, #3.06; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 38, p.346

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

X-ray emission from Eta Carinae, one of the most massive stars in our Galaxy, varies periodically every 5.5 years. The X-ray emission is produced by collision of winds from the binary stars, and the periodic variation probably reflects the orbital motion of the central binary system hidden in the circumstellar nebula. The observed X-ray emission is known to abruptly decrease by two orders of magnitude for 3 months around the periastron phase. The X-ray emission during this time provides a unique probe of the mass loss process from Eta Car. The CHANDRA and XMM-Newton X-ray observatories performed a series of observations covering key phases around the last X-ray minimum in 2003.5. In this presentation, we focus on the variation of the Fe K line.
Most interestingly, the helium-like iron emission line showed significant excesses on both the red and blue sides of the line outside the minimum and exhibited an extreme red excess during the minimum, which looks similar to the red side hump of the Fe K line from the AGN and black hole binary systems. The excess on the blue side probably arises from the blueshift of the helium-like emission from the colliding wind, while the excess on the red side between 6.4 < E < 6.7 keV probably arises from iron in ionization states below Fe XXIV, which may mean that the plasma does not reach ionization equilibrium. This might require an additional cooling process in the shocked gas periastron. We discuss the relation of this mechanism with the X-ray minimum.

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