Symbiotic binaries

A symbiotic binary consists of a mass-losing red giant star and a hot, compact companion (typically a white-dwarf). The hot star ionizes some of the material shed by the giant, and this leads to the symbiotic's characterisitic composite spectrum of nebular emission lines superimposed on molecular absorption bands. Symbiotic binaries are valuable laboratories for the study of cool stellar winds, ionized nebulae, wind-fed accretion processes and wind-wind collision dynamics.

The image to the left is a link to a movie of a simulation of Raman-scattering in a symbiotic binary. The panels are (clockwise, from top left) the intensity image, the intensity image + polarization vectors, the velocity image, and the polarized intensity.