HEASARC Staff Scientist Position - Applications are now being accepted for a Staff Scientist with significant experience and interest in the technical aspects of astrophysics research, to work in the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC) at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Greenbelt, MD. Refer to the AAS Job register for full details.

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RXTE
GOF		 Pictures for the June 5, 2001 Press Release RXTE
FAQ

To read more about these images visit the Press Release.

Artist's impression of an X-ray binary system which could produce variations characterized by random integer multiples of a single constant.
Note: Click on the images to see an enlarged version

asm sky Top: A normal star and an X-ray star orbit about their common center of mass. A spiral wave of denser material is present in the accretion disk of hot gas spiraling into the X-ray star.
asm sky Center: A quarter of an orbit later, the spiral wave lines up with the maximum pull of gravity between the two stars.
asm sky Bottom: If the resulting tidal forces on the disk have a fixed probability of setting off a disruption, then the X-ray radiation will fade at intervals whose lengths are a constant times some random small integer.

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