This timelapse movie shows 56 hours of changing radio emission from the violent binary system known as Scorpius X-1. Sco X-1 is a star in orbit around a neutron star, the remnant of a supernova explosion. In June of 1999, Sco X-1 brightened and dimmed, and “lobes” of bright radio emission were pushed outward by jets at about half the speed of light. These lobes are made when the fast moving particles in the jet, created from the accretion disk of material in orbit around the dead star, collide with surrounding material caught in the flow. Notice at the start that one moving set of lobes disappears, but new lobes are ejected from the core a few hours later. The size scale is in billions of miles, because Scorpius X-1 covers a volume much larger than our Solar System.
Blowing in the Winds Animation
In this artist’s animation, a violent system of two giant stars creates incredible amounts of radio waves as their particle winds slam into each other. The system is called W140.