Pith. sign in

REVIEW 1 cited by

Conflicting disk inclination estimates for the black hole X-ray binary XTE J1550-564

Not yet reviewed by Pith; the record is open.

This paper has not been read by Pith yet. Machine review is queued; the pith claim, tier, and objections will appear here once it completes.

SPECIMEN: schema-true, not a live event

T0 review · schema-true

One-sentence machine reading of the paper's core claim.

pith:XXXXXXXX · record.json · timestamp

arxiv 1907.12114 v1 pith:FLEVZ4F3 submitted 2019-07-28 astro-ph.HE

Conflicting disk inclination estimates for the black hole X-ray binary XTE J1550-564

classification astro-ph.HE
keywords inclinationbinarydiskj1550-564orbitalwellblackcirc
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
0 comments
read the original abstract

XTE J1550-564 is a black hole X-ray binary for which the dynamical characteristics are well established, and the broadband spectral evolution of the source has been well studied. Its orbital inclination is known to be high, at $\sim75^{\circ}$, with the jet estimated to align well with the orbital axis. We explore simultaneous observations made with ASCA and RXTE, covering the $1$--$200$~keV band, during the early stages of the first outburst of XTE J1550-564 in its hard-intermediate state, on 1998-09-23/24. We show that the most up-to-date reflection models, applied to these data, yield an inclination estimate much lower than found in previous studies, at $\sim40^{\circ}$, grossly disagreeing with the dynamically estimated orbital inclination. We discuss the possible explanations for this disagreement and its implications for reflection models, including possible physical scenarios in which either the inner disk is misaligned both with binary orbit and the outer jet, or either the inner accretion flow, corona, and/or jet have vertical structure which leads to lower inferred disk inclination through various physical means.

discussion (0)

Sign in with ORCID, Apple, or X to comment. Anyone can read and Pith papers without signing in.

Forward citations

Cited by 1 Pith paper

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

  1. Black-Hole Spin Measurements from X-ray Reflection Spectroscopy: Quality Criteria and Community Recommendations

    astro-ph.HE 2026-07 conditional novelty 5.0

    Reflection-based black-hole spin measurements should be graded by detectability, uniqueness, and robustness, and classified into high-confidence, systematics-limited, provisional, or non-assessable tiers.