A microquasar shot out from its birth place

Abstract

We show that the microquasar LSI+61303 is running away from its birth place in a young complex of massive stars. The supernova explosion that formed the compact object shot out the x-ray binary with a linear momentum of 430 +/- 140 Msun km/s, which is comparable to the linear momenta found in solitary runaway neutron stars and millisecond pulsars. The properties of the binary system and its runaway motion of 27 +/- 6 km/s imply that the natal supernova was asymmetric and that the upper limit for the mass that could have been suddenly ejected in the explosion is ~2 Msun. The initial mass of the progenitor star of the compact object that is inferred depends on whether the formation of massive stars in the parent stellar cluster was coeval or a sequential process.

4 pages, 1 figure. Published in A&A, see http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=2004A%26A...422L..29M and the NRAO press release at http://www.nrao.edu/pr/2004/shotout/