Tracking a binary back to its birthplace can give astronomers a range for when one of the stars became a supernova and sent the pair moving.
Many stars are born into binary systems, and sometimes those two stars will each be several times more massive than the. The more massive a star is, the shorter its life, so in these systems one of the two stars will run out of fuel and explode as a supernova in only a few tens of millions of years. .
The explosion leaves a compact object like a neutron star or black hole. The companion star will then start to lose mass to its dead and now very dense partner, generating X-rays as it falls in — hence the name X-ray binary. These supernova explosions act like randomly-directed rocket engines, which is why the HMXBs don't remain in their birth clusters or spiral arms. But they don't end up too far away, in galactic terms, because their lives are so short.
The short life of an HMXB also means that they will be concentrated in certain regions — the distribution won't be random."We find high mass x-ray binaries made with massive stars only on the galactic plane, and concentrated in spiral arms," Chaty said. That differs from older stars and
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