| Term: | X-ray sources |
| Definition: |
An astronomical object whose dominant mechanism of radiation is through X-ray emission. X-ray sources contain an extremely hot gas at temperatures from 10^6 to 10^8 K. They are generated by various physical processes involving high energies, such as accretion on to a compact object, shock waves from supernovae, stellar winds, hot gas in stellar coronae, or hot spaces between galaxies in a cluster. The first celestial X-ray source, after the Sun, to be detected was Scorpius X-1 by means of rocket flight. |