Dr Tony Bird

This lenticular image was produced by animating an illustration by Dr Tony Bird’s 'artist's impression' of two stars observed by the INTEGRAL Satellite, called 'the High-Mass X-ray Binary IGR J17391-3021'. The larger object is a supergiant star orbited by a smaller neutron star. The Supergiant emits a dense wind which has a stable disk-like structure at its equator.

Although the source was discovered in 1997 by the XTE telescope, this picture is inspired by 12 million seconds of hard X-ray observations of the system with the INTEGRAL telescope. Each image is approximately two days apart.