MeerKAT

Abstract:

Powerful relativistic jets are among the most ubiquitous and energetic observational consequences of accretion around supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei and neutron stars and stellar-mass black holes in x-ray binary (XRB) systems. But despite more than three decades of study, the structure and composition of these jets remain unknown. Here we present spatially resolved x-ray spectroscopy of arc second-scale x-ray jets from XRB SS 433 analyzed with the Chandra advanced charge-coupled device imaging spectrometer. These observations reveal evidence for a hot continuum and Doppler-shifted iron emission lines from spatially resolved regions. Apparently, in situ reheating of the baryonic component of the jets takes place in a flow that moves with relativistic bulk velocity even more than 100 days after launch from the binary core.