The fading of the extraordinary low mass X-ray binary EXO 0748-676
Abstract
We propose to monitor the dipping low-mass X-ray binary EXO 0748-676 as it turns off and becomes quiescent. RXTE pointed observations of EXO 0748-676 during August 2008 show the source at the lowest flux level since the beginning of the RXTE mission in 1996, indicating that X-ray activity may cease soon, after being a steady accreting X-ray binary since February 1985 (ATel #1736). The proposed XMM observations aim to look at the source both as it turns off and in the period after it ceases X-ray activity to determine the cooling of the neutron star crust, which has been heated by more than 20 years of outburst.
- Publication:
-
XMM-Newton Proposal
- Pub Date:
- October 2008
- Bibcode:
- 2008xmm..prop..152D
- Keywords:
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- White Dwarf Binaries;
- Neutron Star Binaries;
- Cataclysmic Variables;
- ULXs;
- Black Holes;
- EXO 0748-676;
- EXO 0748-676