X-Ray and Optical Observations of XTE J0052-723 a Transient Be/X-Ray Pulsar in the Small Magellanic Cloud

Abstract

On December 27th 2000 during our regular SMC monitoring program with Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer, strong pulsations were detected with a period of 4.78 seconds. Subsequent slew observations performed on Jan 9th and 13th across the field of view allowed localisation of the pulsar's position to RA: 0 52 17, Dec: 72 19 51 (J2000). The outburst continued until Jan 24th, 7 PCA observations were obtained during this period, yielding a maximum X-ray luminosity ~10^38 ergs/s. Following calculation of the pulsar position, optical observations of the RXTE error box were made on Jan 16th 2001 with the 1m telescope of the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) while the source was still in X-ray outburst. Candidate Be stars identified from their photometric colours were subsequently observed with the SAAO 1.9m on Nov 7th 2001 to obtain spectra. Only one of the photometrically identified stars [MA93]537 showed prominent H$\alpha$ emission, with a double peaked line-profile (EW= -43.3+/-0.7 A, separation velocity= 200+/-15 km/s) confirming the presence of a substantial circumstellar disk.

arXiv comment8 pages, 8 figures, Accepted for publication in MNRAS

References in corpus (4)

• Observations of Accreting Pulsars
• N-body Simulations of the Small Magellanic Cloud and the Magellanic Stream
• The Morphologies of the Small Magellanic Cloud
• Discovery of a new Transient X-ray Pulsar in the Small Magellanic Cloud

Cited by in corpus (13)

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• Be/X-ray binaries and candidates: catalogue
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• A Long Look at the Be/X-Ray Binaries of the Small Magellanic Cloud
• The Ups & Downs of Accreting X-Ray Pulsars: Decade-long observations with the Fermi Gamma-Ray Burst Monitor
• XMM-Newton observations of the Small Magellanic Cloud: Be/X-ray binary pulsars active between October 2006 and June 2007
• Long Term Behavior of X-ray Pulsars in the Small Magellanic Cloud
• Exploring the Small Magellanic Cloud to the Faintest X-ray Fluxes: Source Catalog, Timing and Spectral Analysis
• Constraining compactness and magnetic field geometry of X-ray pulsars from the statistics of their pulse profiles
• Radiative Column and Light Curve of X-Ray Binary Pulsars
• INTEGRAL/IBIS observations of a hard X-ray outburst in high mass X-ray binary 4U 2206+54
• The SMC X-ray binary SXP4.78 : a new Type II outburst and the identification and study of the optical counterpart
• Observational constraints on the magnetic field of the bright transient Be/X-ray pulsar SXP 4.78