Spectroscopy of Formula: the mass of the black hole and an image of its accretion disc

Tomography of X-ray Nova Muscae 1991: evidence for ongoing mass transfer and stream–disc overflow★

“…This is expected in a situation where the collision of the stream with the disc creates a shock which shifts the velocity of the inflowing stream toward the velocity of the disc. Such intermediate positioning has been observed in other systems (e.g., Neilsen et al 2008, Marsh, Robinson & Wood 1994, Calvelo et al 2009). …”

The Mass Function of GX 339–4 from Spectroscopic Observations of Its Donor Star*

“…To determine the projected rotational velocity v i sin of the donor star, and the contribution of the accretion disk to the NIR emission, we use the optimal subtraction method (Marsh et al 1994). In MOLLY, we broaden all templates by a range of velocities (0-100 km s −1 in steps of 1 km s −1 ) with rbroad and then use optsub, with a linear limb darkening coefficient of 0.75, to subtract the broadened models from the average GX 339−4 spectrum.…”

Optical Photometry of Black-Hole Candidates

“…https://doi.org/10.1017/S0074180900055819 distorting the light curve at this epoch. Spectroscopic work deduced a disk radius comparable to the size of the primary Roche lobe in 1986 (Johnston et al 1989), by 1991 the disk radius was approximately half this size (Marsh et al 1994; see also Orosz et al 1994).…”

“…Adopting this prescription for the disk radius and demanding grazing eclipses be possible leads to a lower limit on the orbital inclination for a given mass ratio. Taking the mass ratio of q -14.94 from Marsh et al (1994), we find a maximum disk radius iZd(max) = 0.63a. A system with this configuration will only exhibit grazing eclipses for i > 62°; this result is not strongly dependent on the exact value of q until q becomes much smaller than the preferred value.…”

“…Inevitably the light from the mass donor is diluted by the flux from the accretion disk; the extent of this diluting component can be assessed using high quality spectroscopic data (e.g., Marsh et al 1994) but usually some uncertainties remain. Underestimating the diluting flux leads to an underestimate in the orbital inclination.…”