Swift J1357.2-0933, A Nearby Very-faint X-ray Transient.
Abstract
In the last decade a new population of X-ray transients has been discovered. They show anomalously low peak luminosities (2-10 keV) of 1E34 to 1E36 ergs/s. A large fraction of them is expected to harbor accreting neutron stars and black holes in binaries systems. These very faint X-ray binaries provide a new regime to study accretion onto compact objects, and therefore they can improve our understanding of accretion physics and binary evolution models.
Swift J1357.2-0933 is a very-faint X-ray transient recently discovered during outburst in January of 2011, which nature is still unknown. The low column density towards the source and its proximity (∼1.5 kpc) provide an exceptional opportunity to study the X-ray spectrum of a very-faint X-ray transient in unprecedented detail and search for features such as X-ray bursts, X-ray pulsations and eclipses/dips in the X-ray lightcurve. This provides the opportunity to gain insight into the nature of this system and allows for a deeper understanding the peculiar population of very-faint X-ray transients in general. We present our initial results from multi-satellite X-ray observations obtained during the outburst of this unique source.- Publication:
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AAS/High Energy Astrophysics Division #12
- Pub Date:
- September 2011
- Bibcode:
- 2011HEAD...12.1318A