A superburst from GX 3+1

Abstract

I found one long X-ray flare from the X-ray burster GX 3+1 in almost 6 years of observations with the RXTE All Sky Monitor (ASM). The event had a peak flux of about 1.1 Crab (1.5-12 keV), lasted between 4.4 and 16.2 hours and exhibited a fluence of more than about 5x10^{41} erg for a source distance of 5 kpc. During the exponential-like decay, with an exponential decay time of 1.6 hours, spectral softening is seen. The total ASM effective exposure time on GX 3+1 is estimated to be around a year. The flare bears all the characteristics of the recently discovered so-called superbursts in other X-ray burst sources.

4 pages, 1 figure, accepted for A&A Letters

References in corpus (4)

• Carbon Flashes in the Heavy Element Ocean on Accreting Neutron Stars
• A half-a-day long thermonuclear X-ray burst from KS 1731-260
• Recurrent very-long type-I X-ray bursts in the low-mass X-ray binary 4U 1636-53
• A four-hours long burst from Serpens X-1

Cited by in corpus (25)

• Thermonuclear (type-I) X-ray bursts observed by the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer
• Sedimentation and Type I X-ray Bursts at Low Accretion Rates
• What ignites on the neutron star of 4U 0614+091?
• First superburst from a classical low-mass X-ray binary transient
• A superburst from 4U 1254-690
• The Thermal Evolution following a Superburst on an Accreting Neutron Star
• Intermediate long X-ray bursts from the ultra-compact binary source SLX 1737-282
• NuSTAR Observations of the Accreting Atolls GX 3+1, 4U 1702-429, 4U 0614+091, and 4U 1746-371
• The observers' view of (very) long X-ray bursts: they are super!
• The importance of 15O(a,g)19Ne to X-ray bursts and superbursts
• Superburst Ignition and Implications for Neutron Star Interiors
• Superbursts at near-Eddington mass accretion rates
• Study of the reflection spectrum of the accreting neutron star GX 3+1 using XMM-Newton and INTEGRAL
• A relativistic iron emission line from the neutron star low-mass X-ray binary GX 3+1
• GX~3+1: the stability of spectral index as a function of mass accretion rate
• Burst-properties as a function of mass accretion rate in GX 3+1
• Interstellar dust along the line of sight of GX 3+1
• Two-phase X-ray burst from GX 3+1 observed by INTEGRAL
• An explanation for long flares from extragalactic globular cluster X-ray sources
• A catalogue of unusually long thermonuclear bursts on neutron stars
• Time-dependent, compositionally driven convection in the oceans of accreting neutron stars
• NuSTAR and XMM-Newton observations of the Arches cluster in 2015: fading hard X-ray emission from the molecular cloud
• Origin and interpretation of kilohertz QPOs from strange stars in X-ray binary system: theoretical hydrodynamical description
• Study of the reflection spectrum of the bright atoll source GX 3+1 with NuSTAR
• A catalog of intermediate duration Type I X-ray bursts observed with the INTEGRAL satellite