Journal
MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY
Volume 464, Issue 3, Pages 3561-3567Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stw2618
Keywords
ephemerides; binaries: visual; stars: individual: HD 93 129 Aa, Ab; stars: kinematics and dynamics; stars: winds, outflows; X-rays: stars
Categories
Funding
- Spanish Government Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad (MINECO) [AYA2013-40 611-P]
- HST GO programs [10205, 10602, 10898]
- FONDECYT Projects [1 140 076, 11 121 550]
- NASA [NAS5-26555]
- Hubble Space Telescope under GO programs [10205, 10602, 10898]
- European Southern Observatory [094.C-0397, 506.D-0495, 297.D-5038]
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We have used (i) Hubble Space Telescope Advanced Camera for Surveys imaging and Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph spectroscopy, (ii) ground-based Precision Integrated-Optics Near-infrared Imaging ExpeRiment/Very Large Telescope long-baseline interferometry, and (iii) ground-based spectroscopy from different instruments to study the orbit of the extreme multiple system HD 93 129 Aa, Ab, which is composed of (at least) two very massive stars in a long-period orbit with e > 0.92, which will pass through periastron in 2017/2018. In several ways, the system is an. Car precursor. Around the time of periastron passage, the two very strong winds will collide and generate an outburst of non-thermal hard X-ray emission without precedent in an O+O binary since astronomers have been able to observe above Earth's atmosphere. A coordinated multiwavelength monitoring in the next two years will enable a breakthrough understanding of the wind interactions in such extreme close encounters. Furthermore, we have found evidence that HD 93 129 Aa may be a binary system itself. In that case, we could witness a three-body interaction which may yield a runaway star or a stellar collision close to or shortly after the periastron passage. Either of those outcomes would be unprecedented, as they are predicted to be low-frequency events in the Milky Way.
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