Pulsars, transients and relativistic astrophysics

Abstract:

High energy astrophysics has made good use of combined high energy (X-ray, g-ray) and radio observations to uncover connections between outbursts, accretion, particle acceleration and kinetic feedback to the local ambient medium. In the field of microquasars the connections have been particularly important. However, radio astronomy has been relying on essentially the same facilities for the past ∼ 25 years, whereas high-energy astrophysics, in particular space-based research, has had a series of newer and more powerful missions. In the next fifteen years this imbalance is set to be redressed, with a whole familiy of new radio facilities under development en route to the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) in the 2020s. In this brief review I will summarize these future prospects for radio astronomy, and focus on possibly the most exciting of the new facilities to be built in the next decade, the Low Frequency Array LOFAR, and its uses in high energy astrophysics. © Copyright owned by the author(s) under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- ShareAlike Licence.

Abstract:

High energy astrophysics has made good use of combined high energy (X-ray, g-ray) and radio observations to uncover connections between outbursts, accretion, particle acceleration and kinetic feedback to the local ambient medium. In the field of microquasars the connections have been particularly important. However, radio astronomy has been relying on essentially the same facilities for the past ∼ 25 years, whereas high-energy astrophysics, in particular space-based research, has had a series of newer and more powerful missions. In the next fifteen years this imbalance is set to be redressed, with a whole familiy of new radio facilities under development en route to the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) in the 2020s. In this brief review I will summarize these future prospects for radio astronomy, and focus on possibly the most exciting of the new facilities to be built in the next decade, the Low Frequency Array LOFAR, and its uses in high energy astrophysics. © 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.