English

Twenty Years of Timing SS433

Astrophysics 2009-11-06 v1

Abstract

We present observations of the optical ``moving lines'' in spectra of the Galactic relativistic jet source SS433 spread over a twenty year baseline from 1979 to 1999. The red/blue-shifts of the lines reveal the apparent precession of the jet axis in SS433, and we present a new determination of the precession parameters based on these data. We investigate the amplitude and nature of time- and phase-dependent deviations from the kinematic model for the jet precession, including an upper limit on any precessional period derivative of P˙<5×105\dot P < 5 \times 10^{-5}. We also dicuss the implications of these results for the origins of the relativistic jets in SS433.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0107296,
  title  = {Twenty Years of Timing SS433},
  author = {S. S. Eikenberry and P. B. Cameron and B. W. Fierce and D. M. Kull and D. H. Dror and J. R. Houck and B. Margon},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0107296},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

21 pages, including 9 figures. To appear in the Astrophysical Journal