SS 433 jet evolution paper accepted!

This week I received word that a paper that I've written along with David Roberts and John Wardle, entitled "Structure and Magnetic Fields in the Precessing Jet System SS433 III. Evolution of the Intrinsic Brightness of the Jets from a Deep Multi-Epoch VLA Campaign" (whew... that's a mouthful), has been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal.  It is tentatively scheduled to appear in the July 10, 2011, v735 - 2 issue so keep an eye out.  Of course, if you can't wait that long there is a pre-print version available.

As you might have gathered from the title, this is one in a series of papers on SS 433.  I am working on a follow up to this now where we will look at the images of linear polarization from the same data analyzed in paper III.  We hope to have it submitted by the Fall.  For reference, here are links to the first two papers in the series: Paper I, Paper II.

Movies of SS433

SS 433 is a microquasar that continuously emits a pair of powerful jets visible with optical, x-ray, and of course radio telescopes.  One of the unique things about SS 433 is that its jets appear to have a corkscrew-esque shape on the sky.  This is because the "nozzles" of the jets precess wildly.  You can think of it like water shooting out of a garden hose that is being twirled around in your hand.   

Using a series of five 5 GHz (C-Band) VLA images of SS 433, I have made a couple of movies that nicely illustrate the jet motion.  They span roughly 3 months in the summer of 2007.  The first movie is of total radio power and in it you can see the spiral jet pattern propagate outward radially from the bright central source.  The second movie shows the evolution of the linear polarization in the jets (contours are of polarized intensity and the tick marks indicate the polarization angle). 

SS433 - Total Intensity - C Band from Michael Bell on Vimeo.

SS433 - Polarization - C Band from Michael Bell on Vimeo.