Abstract
THE recent discovery1 of radio components apparently moving away from a Galactic source of transient X-ray emission faster than the speed of light (superluminal motion) has identified a low-energy Galactic counterpart to quasars. Here we report high-resolution radio observations of a second Galactic superluminal radio source GRO J1655-40, which was detected as an X-ray transient2 on 27 July 1994. Our radio images reveal two components moving away from each other at an angular speed of 65 ± 5 mas d-1, corresponding to superluminal motion at the estimated distance of 3–5 kpc. The 12-day delay between the X-ray and radio outbursts suggests that the ejection of material at relativistic speeds occurs during a stable phase of accretion onto a black hole, which follows an unstable phase with a high accretion rate.
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Tingay, S., Jauncey, D., Preston, R. et al. Relativistic motion in a nearby bright X-ray source. Nature 374, 141–143 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1038/374141a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/374141a0
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