Cygnus X-3 Radio Jets

This sequence shows the development of radio jets in the microquasar Cygnus X-3 as imaged by the VLA at arcsecond angular scales. Colors are coded in a logarithmic scale. Cygnus X-3 is a binary system which contains a massive Wolf Rayet star with a powerful wind, while the compact object is likely to be a black hole or a neutron star. This is the first time, since the discovery of Cygnus X-3 more than 30 years ago, that the arcsecond jets are observed so clearly and its bipolar nature becomes evident. The vertical separation of the images is proportional to the time elapsed between the epochs of observation (about 15 days). All images in this panel have been rotated 90 degree counterclockwise for better display of the expanding jets.

The maps were obtained with the VLA in A configuration at the wavelength of 6 cm. Uniform weight was used to compute all of them and the clean components were restored using a circular beam of approximately 0.3 arcsecond resolution.

Legacy Astronomical Images

NRAO/AUI/NSF does not hold full copyright for this image. Contact the archivist for details.

Legacy Astronomical Image

Cygnus X-3

Josep Mart?, Josep M. Paredes, Marta Peracaula

Very Large Array (VLA)

2000-10-21

continuum

C

6 cm

5.0 GHz

RA 20:32:26.600, Dec: 40:57:9.000

0.000600 x 0.000300 degrees

Contact the archivist for a high resolution tif of this image.

Galactic Sources Series

Black Holes Unit