by BDanielMayfield » Sun Feb 19, 2017 2:22 pm
Just read up on the Cygnus X-1 beasty, (as Scotty would have called it) allowing me to make some refinements to what I've said before. According to Jim Kaler HDE 226868 is "a magnificent, massive blue class O (O9.7) supergiant" with a surface temperature estimated at 30,000 K. (3 times hotter than geck's blue lightning?)
The matter feeding the BH is not spilling over the systems Roche lobe (point of equal attraction between the centers of star and BH). [I think some illustrations of Cygnus X-1 give this impression.] The accretion disk is feed by the O star's stellar wind.
Now, the Sun's surface temperature is by comparison only about 5772 K, (it's center is about 1.57E7 K) but the Sun's corona (and source of the solar wind) is about 5E6 K, or 5,000,0000 K.
So, how freaking hot could HDE 226868's stellar winds be? (Rhetorical question, I have no idea) Then, take this plasma and compress it (which heats it further) as it is funneled into the accretion disk. Is naked (that is, not covered up by thousands of kilometers of star) fusion going on here? Quite likely, I would think.
Bruce
Just read up on the Cygnus X-1 beasty, (as Scotty would have called it) allowing me to make some refinements to what I've said before. According to Jim Kaler HDE 226868 is "a magnificent, massive blue class O (O9.7) supergiant" with a surface temperature estimated at 30,000 K. (3 times hotter than geck's blue lightning?)
The matter feeding the BH is not spilling over the systems Roche lobe (point of equal attraction between the centers of star and BH). [I think some illustrations of Cygnus X-1 give this impression.] The accretion disk is feed by the O star's stellar wind.
Now, the Sun's surface temperature is by comparison only about 5772 K, (it's center is about 1.57E7 K) but the Sun's corona (and source of the solar wind) is about 5E6 K, or 5,000,0000 K.
So, how freaking hot could HDE 226868's stellar winds be? (Rhetorical question, I have no idea) Then, take this plasma and compress it (which heats it further) as it is funneled into the accretion disk. Is naked (that is, not covered up by thousands of kilometers of star) fusion going on here? Quite likely, I would think.
Bruce