D. Stickland et al., THE ORBIT OF THE SUPERGIANT COMPONENT OF VELA X-1 DERIVED FROM IUE RADIAL-VELOCITIES, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 286(2), 1997, pp. 21-24
47 short-wavelength, high-resolution IUE spectra have been used to der
ive the orbital elements of HD 77581, the supergiant companion to the
neutron star in the X-ray source Vela X-1; the velocity amplitude is a
t the lower end of the range found by previous workers using primarily
optical spectra, but other elements (e, w) are in fair agreement with
those derived from pulse timing studies of the X-ray source. The new
results indicate that the mass of the neutron star is close to 1.4 M.
and is not significantly larger than those measured for other members
of this class of object.