2019/05/21 by P. Kretschmar, S. Martínez‐Núñez, Kretschmar, P. +17
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE) #Particle Detector Development and Performance #X-ray Spectroscopy and Fluorescence Analysis
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1905.08578
openalex publication_date 2019/05/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Vela X-1 is an eclipsing high mass X-ray binary (HMXB) consisting of a 283s accreting X-ray pulsar in a close orbit of 8.964 days around the B0.5Ib supergiant HD77581 at a distance of just 2.4 kpc. The system is considered a prototype of wind-accreting HMXB and it has been used as a baseline in different theoretical or modelling studies. We discuss the observational properties of the system and the use of the observational data as laboratory to test recent developments in modelling the accretion process in High-Mass X-ray Binaries (e.g., Sander et al. 2018; El Mellah et al. 2018), which range from detailed descriptions of the wind acceleration to modelling of the structure of the flow of matter close to the neutron star and its variations.