Search results for "astronomia"
showing 10 items of 673 documents
Timing and Spectral properties of Low Mass X-ray Binary Systems hosting Neutron Stars
Orbital Evolution of an Accreting Millisecond Pulsar: Witnessing the Banquet of a Hidden Black Widow?
2007
We have performed a timing analysis of all the four X-ray outbursts from the accreting millisecond pulsar SAX J1808.4-3658 observed so far by the PCA on board RXTE. For each of the outbursts we derived the best-fit value of the time of ascending node passage. We find that these times follow a parabolic trend, which gives an orbital period derivative $\dot P_{\rm orb} = (3.40 \pm 0.18) \times 10^{-12}$ s/s, and a refined estimate of the orbital period, $P_{\rm orb} = 7249.156499 \pm 1.8 \times 10^{-5}$ s (reference epoch $T_0 = 50914.8099$ MJD). This derivative is positive, suggesting a degenerate or fully convective companion star, but is more than one order of magnitude higher than what is…
Accretion in young stars: measure of the stream velocity of TW Hya from the X-ray Doppler shift
2015
High-resolution X-ray spectra are a unique tool to investigate the accretion process in young stars. In fact X-rays allow to investigate the accretion-shock region, where the infalling material is heated by strong shocks due to the impact with the denser stellar atmosphere. Here we show for the first time that it is possible to constrain the velocity of the accretion stream by measuring the Doppler shift of the emitted X-rays. To this aim we analyzed the deep Chandra/HETGS observation of the accreting young star TW Hya. We selected a sample of emission lines free from significant blends, fitted them with gaussian profiles, computed the radial velocity corresponding to each line, and average…
The Large Area Detector onboard the eXTP mission
2022
The Large Area Detector (LAD) is the high-throughput, spectral-timing instrument onboard the eXTP mission, a flagship mission of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the China National Space Administration, with a large European participation coordinated by Italy and Spain. The eXTP mission is currently performing its phase B study, with a target launch at the end-2027. The eXTP scientific payload includes four instruments (SFA, PFA, LAD and WFM) offering unprecedented simultaneous wide-band X-ray timing and polarimetry sensitivity. The LAD instrument is based on the design originally proposed for the LOFT mission. It envisages a deployed 3.2 m2 effective area in the 2-30 keV energy range, a…
Plasma Diagnostics and Magnetic Complexity of a Post-Flare Active Region with Hinode/XRT: Spatial and Temporal Evolution
2012
Flares are localized phenomena in active regions, but the magnetic and plasma responses may propagate to a larger area. In this work we investigate the temporal evolution of a flare in an active region with particular attention to the morphological details, and to the temperature and emission measure diagnostics allowed by Hinode/XRT.
X-ray emission mechanisms in protostellar jets
2005
Prompted by the recent detection of X-ray emission from Herbig-Haro objects, we studied the interaction between a supersonic jet originating from a young stellar object and the ambient medium; our aim is to investigate the mechanisms causing the X-ray emission. Our model takes into account the radiative losses from optically in plasmas and Spitzer's thermal conduction including saturation effects. We explored the parameter space defined by the density contrast between the ambient medium and the jet and by the Mach number, to infer the configurations which can give rise to X-ray emission. From the models, we derived the X-ray emission as it would be observed with Chandra/ACIS-I and XMM-Newto…
Temperature and density structure of hot and cool loops derived from the analysis of TRACE data
2002
We address the plasma structuring both across and along the magnetic field in two sets of solar coronal loops, observed with TRACE in the 17lÅ and 195Å passbands. We derive, after proper background removal, the density stratification and the thermal structure of the plasma in the fibrils forming the loops with two techniques: a) filter ratio diagnostic (195 Å/171 Å) and b) modeling intensity profiles along the fibrils with hydrostatic models. We find evidence of a hot fibril (T ∼ 5·106 K), with temperature and density stratification well-described with a typical non-isothermal hydrostatic loop model, and evidence of rather cold fibrils (T ∼ 2 · 105 K), isothermal and probably in dynamic con…
MHD Modeling of Accretion Processes in Young Stars with the PLUTO Code
2008
As shown by observations, many young stars (age<5-10 Myr) harbor a circumstellar disk and accrete material from it through the star-disk magnetosphere. Despite the large amount of observational data in the infrared, optical and X-ray bands, different issues regarding star-disk interactions are still yet open. Many of these issues need detailed physical models of the star-disk system for a better insight. To this end, we are developing a model describing the interaction between the accreting material and the star atmosphere, using the 3D Magneto-HydroDynamical (MHD) code PLUTO developed at the University of Torino. We plan to perform a set of demanding simulations on the PI2S2 Grid infrastru…
Modeling SNR shock waves expanding through the magnetized inhomogeneous interstellar medium
2009
We review our recent results on the MHD modeling of supernova shock waves propagating through the magnetized and inhomogeneous ISM. We explore the role of different physical processes simultaneously at work, namely magnetic-field-oriented thermal conduction, radiative cooling and MHD effects, in determining: 1) the mass and energy exchanges between different phases of the ISM and 2) the morphology of supernova remnants as observed in different bands. Our projects required an advanced 3D MHD code for parallel computers, FLASH, and high-performance computing. We discuss the results derived from the analysis of the local interaction of strong shocks with inhomogeneities of the ISM, and those d…