Abstract
During a systematic survey of X-ray flux-limited late-type stars1,2, we have rediscovered a highly reddened emission-line star, previously listed3 as AS431, which sheds light on whether both radio and X-ray emission from the winds of very hot stars can be non-thermal in origin. We report here Einstein observations revealing that AS431 has a highly absorbed X-ray spectrum and a relatively strong intrinsic flux of≥ 5 × 10−12 erg cm−2 s−1, and observations at 20 cm and 6 cm with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory Very Large Array (VLA), showing that it is also a moderately strong radio source ( ∼ 35 mJy). These data, together with optical and infrared observations, suggest a model in which both the radio and X-ray emissions arise in a chaotic stellar wind emerging from a single luminous Wolf-Rayet star.
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Caillault, JP., Chanan, G., Helfand, D. et al. The peculiar X-ray and radio star AS431. Nature 313, 376–378 (1985). https://doi.org/10.1038/313376a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/313376a0
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