The radio surroundings of the microquasar GRO J1655{40

J. A. COMBI; G. E. ROMERO; P. BENAGLIA; I. F. MIRABEL

ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS LETTERS

EDP Sciences

Lugar: Les Ulis Cedex A; Año: 2001 vol. 370 p. 5 - 8

We report the results of a study of the radio surroundings of the superluminal microquasar GRO J1655-40. We have searched for extended continuum structures that might be indicative of the presence of a supernova remnant (SNR) associated with the formation of the compact object in the binary system. We also carried out HI-line observations of the region looking for a local minimum created by an explosive event. Our results indicate that there is, in fact, a bubble in the large-scale HI distribution around GRO J1655-40. We suggest that this structure might be created by the original supernova explosion occurred a few hundred thousand years ago and whose signatures can be traced by the overabundance of alpha -elements recently found by Israelian et al. (cite{Israelian99}) in the companion star.