X-ray Observation of SS 433 with RXTE

Abstract

Apart from regular monitoring by ASM, the compact object SS 433 was observed with RXTE several times last two/three years. We present the first analysis of these observations. We also include the results of the recent exciting TOO campaign made during donour inferior (orbital phase $\varphi =0$) and superior ($\varphi =0.5$) conjunctions which took place on Oct. 2nd, 2003, and on March 13th, 2004 respectively, when the jet itself was directly pointing towards us (i.e., precessional phase $\psi \sim 0$). Generally, we found that two distinct lines fit the spectra taken on all these days. We present some of the light-curves and the X-ray spectra, and show that the Doppler shifts of the emitted lines roughly match those predicted by the kinematic model for the jets. We find that the line with a higher energy can be best identified with a FeXXVI Ly-$\alpha$ transition while the line with lower energy can be identified with a FeXXV (1s2p - 1s${}^2$) transition. We observe that the X-ray flux on March 13th, 2004 (when the base of the jet is exposed) is more than twice compared to that on Oct. 2nd, 2003 (when the base is covered by the companion). We find the flux to continue to remain high at least till another orbital period. We believe that this is because SS 433 was undergoing a weak flaring activity during the recent observation.

15 pages, 6 figures, submitted for publication in MNRAS (April, 2004)

References in corpus (4)

• Iron Emission Lines from Extended X-ray Jets in SS 433: Reheating of Atomic Nuclei
• Evidence for Jet Collimation in SS 433 with the Chandra HETGS
• On the Ejection Mechanism of Bullets in SS 433
• Possible Photometric Evidence of Ejection of Bullet Like Features in the Relativistic Jet source SS433

Cited by in corpus (8)

• WATCHDOG: A Comprehensive All-Sky Database of Galactic Black Hole X-ray Binaries
• On the Nature of the Compact Object in SS~433. Observational Evidence of X-ray Photon Index Saturation
• Properties of X-ray Flux of Jets During 2005 Outburst of Swift J1753.5-0127 Using TCAF Solution
• SS433's accretion disc, wind and jets: before, during and after a major flare
• Diagnostics of the black hole candidate SS433 with the RXTE
• SS 433: Results of a Recent Multi-wavelength Campaign
• Detection of a High-Temperature Blackbody Hump in Black Hole Spectra. The strongly redshifted annihilation line
• Long-term multi-frequency monitoring of microquasars