Corona Borealis is a small constellation in the Northern Celestial Hemisphere. It is one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy, and remains one of the 88 modern constellations. Its brightest stars form a semicircular arc. Its Latin name, inspired by its shape, means "northern crown". In classical mythology Corona Borealis generally represented the crown given by the god Dionysus to the Cretan princess Ariadne and set by her in the heavens. Other cultures likened the pattern to a circle of elders, an eagle's nest, a bear's den or a smokehole. Ptolemy also listed a southern counterpart, Corona Australis, with a similar pattern.
A neutron star is the collapsed core of a massive supergiant star, which had a total mass of between 10 and 25 solar masses, possibly more if the star was especially metal-rich. Except for black holes and some hypothetical objects, neutron stars are the smallest and densest currently known class of stellar objects. Neutron stars have a radius on the order of 10 kilometres (6 mi) and a mass of about 1.4 solar masses. They result from the supernova explosion of a massive star, combined with gravitational collapse, that compresses the core past white dwarf star density to that of atomic nuclei.
A Thorne–Żytkow object, also known as a hybrid star, is a conjectured type of star wherein a red giant or red supergiant contains a neutron star at its core, formed from the collision of the giant with the neutron star. Such objects were hypothesized by Kip Thorne and Anna Żytkow in 1977. In 2014, it was discovered that the star HV 2112, located in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), was a strong candidate. Another possible candidate is the star HV 11417, also located in the SMC.
X-ray binaries are a class of binary stars that are luminous in X-rays. The X-rays are produced by matter falling from one component, called the donor, to the other component, called the accretor, which is very compact: a neutron star or black hole. The infalling matter releases gravitational potential energy, up to several tenths of its rest mass, as X-rays. The lifetime and the mass-transfer rate in an X-ray binary depends on the evolutionary status of the donor star, the mass ratio between the stellar components, and their orbital separation.
Be/X-ray binaries (BeXRBs) are a class of high-mass X-ray binaries that consist of a Be star and a neutron star. The neutron star is usually in a wide highly elliptical orbit around the Be star. The Be stellar wind forms a disk confined to a plane often different from the orbital plane of the neutron star. When the neutron star passes through the Be disk, it accretes a large mass of gas in a short time. As the gas falls onto the neutron star, a bright flare in hard X-rays is seen.
Soft X-ray transients (SXTs), also known as X-ray novae and black hole X-ray transients, are composed of a compact object and some type of "normal", low-mass star. These objects show dramatic changes in their X-ray emission, probably produced by variable transfer of mass from the normal star to the compact object, a process called accretion. In effect the compact object "gobbles up" the normal star, and the X-ray emission can provide the best view of how this process occurs. The "soft" name arises because in many cases there is strong soft X-ray emission from an accretion disk close to the compact object, although there are exceptions which are quite hard.
X-ray pulsars or accretion-powered pulsars are a class of astronomical objects that are X-ray sources displaying strict periodic variations in X-ray intensity. The X-ray periods range from as little as a fraction of a second to as much as several minutes.
Alpha Coronae Borealis, officially named Alphecca, is an eclipsing binary star in the constellation of Corona Borealis. It is located about 75 light years from the Sun and contains two main sequence stars, one class A and one class G.
Centaurus X-3 is an X-ray pulsar with a period of 4.84 seconds. It was the first X-ray pulsar to be discovered, and the third X-ray source to be discovered in the constellation Centaurus. The system consists of a neutron star orbiting a massive, O-type supergiant star dubbed Krzeminski's star after its discoverer, Wojciech Krzemiński. Matter is being accreted from the star onto the neutron star, resulting in X-ray emission.
An ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX) is an astronomical source of X-rays that is less luminous than an active galactic nucleus but is more consistently luminous than any known stellar process (over 1039 erg/s, or 1032 watts), assuming that it radiates isotropically (the same in all directions). Typically there is about one ULX per galaxy in galaxies which host them, but some galaxies contain many. The Milky Way has not been shown to contain a ULX, although SS 433 may be a possible source. The main interest in ULXs stems from their luminosity exceeding the Eddington luminosity of neutron stars and even stellar black holes. It is not known what powers ULXs; models include beamed emission of stellar mass objects, accreting intermediate-mass black holes, and super-Eddington emission.
In astronomy, a polar is a highly magnetic type of cataclysmic variable (CV) binary star system, originally known as an AM Herculis star after the prototype member AM Herculis. Like other CVs, polars contain two stars: an accreting white dwarf (WD), and a low-mass donor star which is transferring mass to the WD as a result of the WD's gravitational pull, overflowing its Roche lobe. Polars are distinguished from other CVs by the presence of a very strong magnetic field in the WD. Typical magnetic field strengths of polar systems are 10 million to 80 million gauss. The WD in the polar AN Ursae Majoris has the strongest known magnetic field among cataclysmic variables, with a field strength of 230 million gauss.
The gamma-ray and X-ray source GRS 1124-683, discovered by the Granat mission and Ginga, is a system containing a black hole candidate. The system also goes by the name X-ray Nova Muscae 1991 or GU Muscae. These two orbiting X-ray telescopes discovered the system when the system produced an outburst of X-rays on January 9, 1991.
GRS 1915+105 or V1487 Aquilae is an X-ray binary star system which features a regular star and a black hole. It was discovered on August 15, 1992 by the WATCH all-sky monitor aboard Granat. "GRS" stands for "GRANAT source", "1915" is the right ascension and "105" reflects the approximate declination. The near-infrared counterpart was confirmed by spectroscopic observations. The binary system lies 11,000 parsecs away in Aquila. GRS 1915+105 is the heaviest of the stellar black holes so far known in the Milky Way Galaxy, with 10 to 18 times the mass of the Sun. It is also a microquasar, and it appears that the black hole rotates at least 950 times per second, close to the maximum of 1,150 times per second, with a spin parameter value between 0.82 and 1.00.
Circinus X-1 is an X-ray binary star system that includes a neutron star. Observation of Circinus X-1 in July 2007 revealed the presence of X-ray jets normally found in black hole systems; it is the first of the sort to be discovered that displays this similarity to black holes. Circinus X-1 may be among the youngest X-ray binaries observed.
V404 Cygni is a microquasar and a binary system in the constellation of Cygnus. It contains a black hole with a mass of about 9 M☉ and an early K giant star companion with a mass slightly smaller than the Sun. The star and the black hole orbit each other every 6.47129 days at fairly close range. Due to their proximity and the intense gravity of the black hole, the companion star loses mass to an accretion disk around the black hole and ultimately to the black hole itself.
GR Muscae, also known as 2S 1254-690 is a binary star system in the constellation Musca composed of a neutron star of between 1.2 and 1.8 times the mass of the Sun and a low-mass star likely to be around the mass of the Sun in close orbit. A magnitude 19 blue star was pinpointed as the optical counterpart of the X-ray source in 1978. Its apparent magnitude varies from 18 to 19.1 over a period of 0.16 days.
BP Crucis is an X-ray binary system containing a blue hypergiant and a pulsar.
AK Scorpii is a Herbig Ae/Be star and spectroscopic binary star about 459 light-years distant in the constellation Scorpius. The star belongs to the nearby Upper Centaurus–Lupus star-forming region and the star is actively accreting material. The binary is surrounded by a circumbinary disk that was imaged with VLT/SPHERE in scattered light and with ALMA.
X1822–371, associated with the optically visible star V691 Coronae Australis, is a neutron-star X-ray binary system at a distance of approximately 2-2.5 kiloparsecs. It is known to have a high inclination of i = 82.5°± 1.5°. This source displays relatively high brightness in the optical wavelengths when compared to the X-ray, making it a prototypical Accretion Disk Coronae (ADC) source, i.e. a source with a corona extending above and below its accretion disk. The only-partial eclipses in its light curve, even at such a high inclination, support this hypothesis. Estimates of the mass of its neutron star lies between 1.14–2.32 solar masses. The optical spectrum of X1822–371 displays strong Hα, Hβ, He I, He II and Bowen Blend features. These features have been extensively studied using the technique of Doppler tomography.
UY Volantis, also known as EXO 0748-676, is a low mass X-ray binary system located in the constellation Volans. With an apparent magnitude of 16.9, it requires a powerful telescope to see. With a radial velocity of 20 km/s, it is drifting away from the Solar System, and is currently located 26,000 light years away.
