Chandra HETGS Multiphase Spectroscopy of the Young Magnetic O Star θ1 Orionis C

By M. Gagne, M. Oksala, D. Cohen, S. Tonnesen, A. ud-Doula, S. Owocki, R. Townsend, J. Macfarlane. 2005

174 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We report on four Chandra grating observations of the oblique magnetic rotator θ1 Ori C (O5.5 V), covering a wide range of viewing angles with respect to the star's 1060 G dipole magnetic field. We employ line-width and centroid analyses to study the dynamics of the X-ray-emitting plasma in the circumstellar environment, as well as line-ratio diagnostics to constrain the spatial location, and global spectral modeling to constrain the temperature distribution and abundances of the very hot plasma. We investigate these diagnostics as a function of viewing angle and analyze them in conjunction with new MHD simulations of the magnetically channeled wind shock mechanism on θ1 Ori C. This model fits all the data surprisingly well, predicting the temperature, luminosity, and occultation of the X-ray-emitting plasma with rotation phase.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f16fa3c23f62b4f5bd7fdb93508bb0e34068d0e5

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

Citations in the corpus

A CATALOG OF X-RAY POINT SOURCES FROM TWO MEGASECONDS OF CHANDRA OBSERVATIONS OF THE GALACTIC CENTER (2008, background): “Massive OB and Wolf–Rayet stars produce X-rays through shocks in their stellar winds (Berghöfer et al. 1997; Gagné et al. 2005), and possibly from magnetically confined plasma close to their stellar surfaces (Waldorn & Cassinelli 2007).”
The surprising magnetic topology of τ Sco: fossil remnant or dynamo output? (2006, unknown): “…models, leading some authors (e.g., Cohen et al. 2003) to speculate that it displays the presence of a magnetically conﬁned wind, as proposed by Stahl et al. (1996) and Babel & Montmerle (1997), and as detected on the very young O star θ 1 Ori C (Donati et al. 2002; Gagn´e et al. 2005b,a).”
An investigation of the close environment of β Cephei with the VEGA/CHARA interferometer (2010, background): “…work based on dynamical modeling of the wind-magnetic-field interaction, however, indicates that the thick ring (in the X-ray domain) predicted by Babel & Montmerle (1997) would be unlikely to form around a star such as β Cep (Gagné et al. 2005; ud-Doula & Owocki 2002; Townsend & Owocki 2005).”
Magnetic Fields of Nondegenerate Stars (2009, methodology): “The model provides a good match to the data whenever detailed observations are available (Donati et al. 2001, 2002; Gagné et al. 2005).”