2008A&A...490..259S

We present XMM-Newton observations of the WC binary θ Muscae (WR 48), the second brightest Wolf-Rayet binary in optical wavelengths. The system consists of a short-period (19.1375days) WC5/WC6 + O6/O7V binary and possibly has an additional O supergiant companion (O9.5/B0Iab) which is optically identified at a separation of ∼46mas. Strong emission lines from highly ionized ions of C, O, Ne, Mg, Si, S, Ar, Ca and Fe are detected. The spectra are fitted by a multi-temperature thin-thermal plasma model with an interstellar absorption N_H=2-3x10²¹cm^–2. Lack of nitrogen line indicates that the abundance of carbon is at least an order of magnitude larger than that of nitrogen. A Doppler shift of ∼630km/s is detected for the O VIII line, while similar shifts are obtained from the other lines. The reddening strongly suggests that the emission lines originated from the wind-wind shock zone, where the average velocity is ∼600km/s. The red-shift motion is inconsistent with a scenario in which the X-rays originate from the wind-wind collision zone in the short-period binary, and would be evidence supporting the widely separated O supergiant as a companion. This may make up the collision zone be lying behind the short-period binary. In addition to the emission lines, we also detected the RRC (radiative recombination continuum) structure from carbon around 0.49keV. This implies the existence of additional cooler plasma.