Katherine Blundell OBE

Abstract:

We investigate the phenomenon of circumbinary disks: their stability and potentially insightful use as diagnostic tools of outflows. Our fully 3D simulations investigate the behaviour of circumbinary orbits, exploring binary mass fraction - eccentricity parameter space. The work presented also has implications for exoplanetary astronomy in the existence and determination of stable orbits in binary systems. © Copyright owned by the author(s) under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Licence.

Abstract:

The compelling evidence for a connection between SS 433 and W50 has provoked much imagination for decades. There are still many unanswered questions: What was the nature of the progenitor of the compact object in SS 433? What causes the evident re-collimation in SS 433's jets? How recent is SS 433's current precession state? What mass and energy contributions from a possible supernova explosion are required to produce W50? Here we comment on two of our 53 models: (i) featuring the SNR evolution alone, and (ii) the SNR combined with a simple jet model. © Copyright owned by the author(s) under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Licence.

Abstract:

The compelling evidence for a connection between SS 433 and W50 has provoked much imagination for decades. There are still many unanswered questions: What was the nature of the progenitor of the compact object in SS 433? What causes the evident re-collimation in SS 433's jets? How recent is SS 433's current precession state? What mass and energy contributions from a possible supernova explosion are required to produce W50? Here we comment on two of our 53 models: (i) featuring the SNR evolution alone, and (ii) the SNR combined with a simple jet model. © Copyright owned by the author(s) under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Licence.

Abstract:

A succession of near-IR spectroscopic observations, taken nightly throughout an entire cycle of SS 433's orbit with UKIRT, reveal (i) the persistent signature of SS 433's accretion disc, having a rotation speed of ∼ 500 kms-1and (ii) confirms the presence of the circumbinary disc recently discovered at optical wavelengths by Blundell, Bowler & Schmidtobreick (2008) and (iii) detects a much faster outflow than has previously been measured from the disc wind. Our relatively high spectral resolution at these near-IR wavelengths has enabled us to deconstruct the different components, and their physical origins, that comprise the Brackett-γ line in this binary system. © Copyright owned by the author(s) under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- ShareAlike Licence.