We have monitored a Type II outburst of the Be/X-ray binary MXB 0656-072 in a series of pointed RXTE observations during October through December 2003. The source spectrum shows a cyclotron resonance scattering feature at 32.8 +/- 0.5 keV, corresponding to a magnetic field strength of (3.67 +/- 0.06) x 10^12 G and is stable through the outburst and over the pulsar spin phase. The pulsar, with an average pulse period of 160.4 +/- 0.4 s, shows a spin-up of 0.45 s over the duration of the outburst. From optical data, the source distance is estimated to be 3.9 +/- 0.1 kpc and this is used to estimate the X-ray luminosity and a theoretical prediction of the pulsar spin-up during the outburst.
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0602113,
title = {Study of the cyclotron feature in MXB 0656-072},
author = {V. A. McBride and J. Wilms and M. J. Coe and I. Kreykenbohm and R. E. Rothschild and W. Coburn and J. L. Galache and P. Kretschmar and W. R. T. Edge and R. Staubert},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0602113},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
7 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in A&A