2003/03/03 by W. A. Heindl, J. A. Tomsick, R. Wijnands +1 · 1 citation
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Earth Systems and Cosmic Evolution #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/375550
Submitted to ApJ Letters. 5 pages, 2 figures (1 color). Uses emulateapj
arxiv created 2003/03/03 · openalex publication_date 2003/04/11 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
We have discovered extended X-ray emission from the microquasar Cygnus X-3 in archival Chandra X-Ray Observatory observations. A 5'' wide structure lies approximately 16'' to the northeast from the core point source and may be extended in that direction. This angular scale corresponds to a physical extent of roughly 0.8 lt-yr, at a distance of 2.5 lt-yr from Cyg X-3 (assuming a 10 kpc distance). The flux varied by a factor of 2.5 during the 4 months separating two of the observations, indicating significant substructure. The peak 2-10 keV luminosity was ~5 × 10 34 ergs s -1 . There may also be weaker, extended emission of similar scale oppositely directed from the core, suggesting a bipolar outflow. This structure is not part of the dust-scattering halo, nor is it caused by the Chandra point-spread function. In this Letter, we describe the observations and discuss possible origins of the extension.