| Issue |
A&A
Volume 395, Number 2, November IV 2002
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Page(s) | 595 - 599 | |
| Section | Interstellar and circumstellar matter | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361:20021440 | |
| Published online | 14 November 2002 | |
The runaway black hole GRO J1655-40 *
1
Service d'Astrophysique / CEA-Saclay, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France
2
Instituto de Astronomía y Física del Espacio/Conicet, Argentina
3
European Southern Observatory, Karl-Schwarzschils-Strasse 2, Garching bei München, 85740, Germany
4
Instituto Argentino de Radioastronomía, C.C.5, (1894) Villa Elisa, Buenos Aires, Argentina
5
Instituto de Astronomía, UNAM, Apartado Postal 3-72, 58089 Morelia, Michoacán, México
6
Max Planck Institute für Extraterrestrische Physik, Giessenbachstrasse, Postfach 1312, 85748, Garching, Germany
7
Max Planck Institute für Plasmaphysik, Boltzmannstrasse 2, 85748, Garching, Germany
Corresponding author: I. F. Mirabel, fmirabel@cea.fr
Received:
15
July
2002
Accepted:
23
September
2002
We have used the Hubble Space Telescope to measure the
motion in the sky and compute the galactocentric orbit of the black hole
X-ray binary GRO J1655-40. The system moves with a runaway space velocity
of 
km s-1 in a highly eccentric (
)
orbit. The black hole was formed in the disk at a distance greater
than 3 kpc from the Galactic centre and must have been shot to
such an eccentric orbit by the explosion of the progenitor star.
The runaway linear momentum and kinetic energy of this black hole binary
are comparable to those of solitary neutron stars and
millisecond pulsars. GRO J1655-40 is the first black hole for which
there is evidence for a runaway motion imparted by a natal kick
in a supernova explosion.
Key words: stars: individual: GRO J1655-40 / black hole physics / X-rays: binaries / astrometry
© ESO, 2002
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