Talk:X-ray burster

Large overhaul

I did a large overhaul of this page. Below I have pasted the article before my editing, in case anyone wishes to compare or change back my work. DAID 12:11, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

X-ray bursters are a class of binary stars which have periodic outbursts luminous in X-rays. They contain a neutron star and an accreting companion.

When a star in a binary fills its Roche lobe (either due to being very large or very close to its companion), it begins to lose matter, which streams into an accretion disk surrounding the other star. In an X-ray burster, this hydrogen-rich material accretes onto the surface of the neutron star as a layer of degenerate gas. After enough of this material accumulates, fusion ignites in the degenerate gas. Since fusion is a runaway process in a degenerate medium, the result is explosive. The resulting spike in X-ray luminosity is called an X-ray burst. Most X-ray bursters have irregular periods on the order of a few hours. Theory suggests that in at least some cases the hydrogen in the accreting material burns continuously, and that it is the accumulation of helium that causes the bursts.

Luminous X-ray bursts can be considered standard candles, since the mass of neutron star determines the luminosity of the burst. Therefore, comparing the observed X-ray flux to the predicted value yields relatively accurate distances. Observations of X-ray bursts allow also the determination of the radius of the neutron star.

Large overhaul II, Introduction

The former introduction has been replaced by a much expanded version, including references. The previous one I post below, which is only two sentences, each containing an error. In the first case, the statement implies X-ray bursters glow only in the X-ray, which is not true, the luminosity is just peaked in this region. In the second case, the word "accreting" applies to the object onto which matter falls, not the other way around. DAID (talk) 06:23, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

X-ray bursters are a class of binary stars which have periodic outbursts luminous in X-rays. They contain a neutron star and an accreting companion.

X-ray bursts vs. rp-process

I wonder how we can best integrate the pages concerning the rp-process and X-ray bursts, as the two subjects are inherently intertwined. DAID 10:50, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Citations needed

This article needs some citations. As I made many of the recent additions, I will attempt to my part in citing my sources when I am back at home with access to all my books. DAID 10:50, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Still no citations. I can only blame myself. But I write a thesis chapter soon concerned with this topic, so in two months I may make some nice additions, I promise. Sorry for the extremely long delays! DAID (talk) 13:10, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Getting around to some improvements in this department as I rewrite the article and expand it again. DAID (talk) 06:27, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Redirections needed

The only queries that come up to this page are 'X-ray burster' and 'X-ray burst.' It may be useful to add re-directions from 'Xray Burst,' 'Xray Burster,' 'X ray burst,' 'X ray burster' and 'XRB,' but I'm not sure what the Wikipedia policy is on using many redirections, particularly so many. Maybe my suggested list can be narrowed down to the most likely candidates? Is there a way to fix this otherwise? DAID (talk) 13:08, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Daid

Good work on this and the rp-process page. I hope to contribute more to this page soon. I will likely add some information about the multi-peaked x-ray bursts that have been observed, both those that occur due to photospheric radius expansion[PRE] (actually not double peaks in total luminosity) and those more curious bursts which have a double-peak in bolometric luminosity. For the PREs I will likely discuss the mechanism, but for the latter type I plan to mention suggested causes, but specifically cite them as such.--Potentialwell (talk) 01:51, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! I tend to do wiki editing in blocks many months apart, so my editing habits are rather like a step function. Actually I wanted to add information about double-peaked bursts as well. This is basically the motivation for my Master's research, but I'd left it out due to a conflict of interest and not being certain that this is generally relevant. DAID (talk) 12:31, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

I suppose my editing habits are similar. I wrote a proposal involving the double-peaked bursts for this year's DOE Office of Science Graduate Student fellowship (...which I didn't get). I'm just finishing by bachelor's thesis now (under Hendrik Schatz at MSU) but I start grad school at Michigan State in May.--Potentialwell (talk) 01:52, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

0utsider

Been a while since this page was modified! I fixed a number of numerical issues in the main article and moved around a bit of the text to make it flow better. Dunno if DAID is still active here (seems like mostly their work) but I hope these changes are OK. Might be more to come soon

0utsider (talk) 09:20, 27 October 2022 (UTC)