English

The spectacular X-ray echo of a magnetar burst

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2015-05-14 v1 Astrophysics of Galaxies

Abstract

The Anomalous X-ray Pulsar (AXP) 1E 1547.0-5408 reactivated in 2009 January with the emission of dozens of short bursts. Follow-up observations with Swift/XRT and XMM-Newton showed the presence of multiple expanding rings around the position of the AXP. These rings are due to scattering, by different layers of interstellar dust, of a very high fluence burst emitted by 1E 1547.0-5408 on 2009 January 22. Thanks to the exceptional brightness of the X-ray rings, we could carry out a detailed study of their spatial and spectral time evolution until 2009 February 4. This analysis gives the possibility to estimate the distance of 1E 1547.0-5408. We also derived constraints on the properties of the dust and of the burst responsible for this rare phenomenon.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1001.1296,
  title  = {The spectacular X-ray echo of a magnetar burst},
  author = {A. Tiengo and G. Vianello and P. Esposito and S. Mereghetti},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1001.1296},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

Proceedings of the conference X-Ray Astronomy 2009, Present Status, multiwavelength approach and future perspectives, September 7 - 11, 2009, Bologna, Italy