Very faint X-ray transients in our Galaxy

We present the first results of our X-ray monitoring campaign using the X-ray satellites XMM-Newton and Chandra on the 1.7 square degree region centered on Sgr A*. The purpose of this campaign is to monitor the X-ray behavior of X-ray sources (both persistent and transient ones) which are too faint to be detected by monitoring instruments aboard other satellites currently in orbit (e.g., RXTE, Integral, Swift). Our first observations were obtained on June 5, 2005, using the HRC-I detector aboard Chandra. Here we briefly discuss our results on the very faint X-ray transients we detected during these observations. We detected new outbursts (with peak luminosities close to 10³⁶ erg s^-1) of the two very faint transients GRS 1741.9-2853 and XMM J174457-2850.3, as well as a potential new very faint X-ray transient with an outburst luminosity of a few times 10³⁴ erg s^-1.