The Discovery of an Outburst and Pulsed X-ray Flux from SMC X-2 from RXTE Observations

Abstract

Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer All Sky Monitor observations of SMC X-2 show that the source experienced an outburst in January to April 2000 reaching a peak luminosity of greater than ~10^38 ergs s^-1. RXTE Proportional Counter Array observations during this outburst reveal the presence of pulsations with a 2.37s period. However, optical photometry of the optical counterpart showed the source to be still significantly fainter than it was more than half a year after the outburst in the 1970s when SMC X-2 was discovered.

arXiv commentAccepted for publication in Astrophysical Journal Letters

References in corpus (6)

• Observations of Accreting Pulsars
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• ROSAT HRI catalogue of X-ray sources in the SMC region
• A Study of the Populations of X-ray Sources in the Small Magellanic Cloud with ASCA
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