ABSTRACT
We report on the results of a Chandra observation of the source IGR J16327-4940, suggested to be a high-mass X-ray binary hosting a luminous blue variable star (LBV). The source field was ...imaged by ACIS-I in 2023 to search for X-ray emission from the LBV star and eventually confirm this association. No X-ray emission is detected from the LBV star, with an upper limit on the X-ray luminosity of L$_{\rm 0.5-10 \,keV}\lt 2.9(^{+1.6} _{-1.1})\times 10^{32}$ erg s−1 (at the LBV distance d = 12.7$^{+3.2} _{-2.7}$ kpc). We detected 21 faint X-ray sources, 8 of which inside the INTEGRAL error circle. The brightest one is the best candidate soft X-ray counterpart of IGR J16327-4940, showing a hard power-law spectrum and a flux corrected for the absorption UF0.5–10 keV = 2.5 × 10−13 erg cm−2 s−1, implying a luminosity of 3.0 × 1033 d$_{10~{\rm kpc}}^2$ erg s−1. No optical/near-infrared counterparts have been found. Previous X–ray observations of the source field with Swift/XRT and ART-XC did not detect any source consistent with the INTEGRAL position. These findings exclude the proposed LBV star as the optical association, and pinpoint the most likely soft X-ray counterpart. In this case, the source properties suggest a low-mass X-ray binary, possibly a new member of the very faint X-ray transient class.
We have carried out a deep survey of the M81 field in the 25–60 keV energy band based on long-term (2003–2023) INTEGRAL observations. A record sensitivity of 0.16 mCrab at a detection significance of
...has been achieved in the central part of the field owing to the long accumulated exposure (19.2 Ms). The total area of the survey is 1004 deg
at a sensitivity level better than 0.72 mCrab. We have produced a catalog of sources detected at a significance level higher than
. It contains 51 objects most of which are active galactic nuclei (AGNs). The median redshift of the Seyfert galaxies in the catalog is
. Six sources have not been detected previously in any of the X-ray surveys. According to the available indirect data, all of them and two more sources that have already been entered previously into the INTEGRAL survey catalogs can also be AGNs, including those with strong internal absorption.
ABSTRACT
We present the results of current observations of the young compact cluster of massive stars Westerlund 2 (Wd2) with the Mikhail Pavlinsky ART-XC telescope aboard the Spectrum-Roentgen-Gamma ...(SRG) observatory which we analysed together with the archival Chandra data. In general, Wd2 was detected over the whole electromagnetic spectrum including high-energy gamma rays, which revealed a cosmic ray acceleration in this object to the energies up to tens of TeV. The detection of Wd2 with ART-XC allowed us to perform a joint spectral analysis together with the high resolution Chandra observations of the diffuse emission from a few selected regions in the vicinity of the Wd2 core in the 0.4–20 keV range. To fit the Wd2 X-ray spectrum above a few keV one needs either a non-thermal power-law emission component, or a hot plasma with temperatures ∼ 5 keV. Our magnetohydrodynamic modelling of the plasma flows in Wd2 shows substantially lower electron temperatures in the system and thus the presence of the non-thermal component is certainly preferable. A kinetic model of the particle acceleration demonstrated that the non-thermal component may originate from the synchrotron radiation of multi-TeV electrons and positrons produced in Wd2 in accordance with the TeV photons detection from the source.
Results of the deep survey of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) obtained with the INTEGRAL observatory are presented. The long exposure ( ∼ 7 Ms) allowed us to detect 21 sources in this sky region: ...ten belonging to the LMC itself (7 HMXBs, 2 PSRs, 1 LMXB), six of extragalactic origin and three belonging to other galaxies in the Local Group - the Milky Way (2 sources) and Small Magellanic Cloud (1 source). Four of the 21 sources were newly discovered hard X-ray sources, in addition to IGR J05414-6858 reported earlier; two of them were identified with extragalactic objects. We report also for the first time the detection of hard X-ray emission from the Crab-like pulsar PSR J0537-6910 and the identification of the hard X-ray source IGR J05305-6559 with the high-mass X-ray binary EXO 053109-6609.
Using long-term INTEGRAL hard X-ray observations, we have put upper limits on the bolometric luminosity (
erg s
) of the nuclei of 72 nearby dwarf galaxies located in the M81 field. This has allowed ...us to constrain the fraction of galaxies in which the central black hole accretes matter at a rate above 0.1
of the critical one. Under simple assumptions about the distributions of black hole masses and accretion rates this fraction does not exceed 9
. Reliable estimates of the central black hole masses are required to obtain more stringent constraints on the fraction of AGNs.
IGR J17591−2342 is an accreting millisecond X-ray pulsar, discovered with INTEGRAL, which went into outburst around July 21, 2018. To better understand the physics acting in these systems during the ...outburst episode, we performed detailed temporal-, timing-, and spectral analyses across the 0.3–300 keV band using data from NICER, XMM-Newton, NuSTAR, and INTEGRAL. The hard X-ray 20–60 keV outburst profile covering ∼85 days is composed of four flares. Over the course of the maximum of the last flare, we discovered a type-I thermonuclear burst in INTEGRAL JEM-X data, posing constraints on the source distance. We derived a distance of 7.6 ± 0.7 kpc, adopting Eddington-limited photospheric radius expansion and assuming anisotropic emission. In the timing analysis, using all NICER 1–10 keV monitoring data, we observed a rather complex set of behaviours starting with a spin-up period (MJD 58345–58364), followed by a frequency drop (MJD 58364–58370), an episode of constant frequency (MJD 58370–58383), concluded by irregular behaviour till the end of the outburst. The 1–50 keV phase distributions of the pulsed emission, detected up to ∼120 keV using INTEGRAL ISGRI data, was decomposed in three Fourier harmonics showing that the pulsed fraction of the fundamental increases from ∼10% to ∼17% going from ∼1.5 to ∼4 keV, while the harder photons arrive earlier than the soft photons for energies ≲10 keV. The total emission spectrum of IGR J17591−2342 across the 0.3–150 keV band could adequately be fitted in terms of an absorbed COMPPS model yielding as best fit parameters a column density of NH = (2.09 ± 0.05) × 1022 cm−2, a blackbody seed photon temperature kTbb, seed of 0.64 ± 0.02 keV, electron temperature kTe = 38.8 ± 1.2 keV and Thomson optical depth τT = 1.59 ± 0.04. The fit normalisation results in an emission area radius of 11.3 ± 0.5 km adopting a distance of 7.6 kpc. Finally, the results are discussed within the framework of accretion physics- and X-ray thermonuclear burst theory.
During the scanning observations of the Galactic center region in late August–September 2016 we detected a new (third) outburst of the historical X-ray nova GRS 1739-278, a presumed black hole in a ...low-mass X-ray binary. This was reported in the Astronomer’s Telegrams (Mereminskiy et al. 2016). In this paper we present the results of INTEGRAL and Swift observations of the outburst development. According to these observations, the flux from the source in the hard X-ray band (20–60 keV) rose from ~11 (September 3) to ~30 mCrab (September 14), was at the attained level for ~8 days, and then returned to ~15 mCrab. The spectrum of the source taken at its peak brightness in the energy range 0.5–150 keV could be fitted by a single power law with a photon index of 1.86 ± 0.07 distorted only by photoabsorption corresponding to the hydrogen column density log
10
(
N
H
) = 22.37 under the assumption of a solar abundance. This means that the source at this time was in the low/hard state. Infrared observations with the RTT-150 telescope near the X-ray brightness peak of the source revealed no emission down to
22
⋅
m
0
(in the
r
’ band) and
20
⋅
m
9
(in the
i
’ band). At the time of writing the paper we do not yet know whether this outburst ended or only its initial stage was observed. If it ended, then based on the light curve and spectra, we can state that it was a “failed” outburst, i.e., the amount of accreted matter in this episode was insufficient to reach the high or very high state with a soft blackbody component in the spectrum characteristic of developed outbursts.
We present the results of our analysis of the JEM-X/INTEGRAL data obtained from January 2003 to January 2015 aimed at searching for type I X-ray bursts from known and new bursters. Such bursts are ...caused by thermonuclear explosions on the surface of a neutron star. We have searched for bursts in the records of the count rate of the JEM-X detectors in the 3–20 keV energy band. We have separately reconstructed and analyzed the light curves of 104 X-ray bursters known to date based on the JEM-X data. A similar search for bursts was previously carried out in the 15–25 keV data from the IBIS/ISGRI telescope onboard the INTEGRAL observatory obtained in 2003–2009. We have continued to analyze the data from this telescope up until the observations in January 2015. The joint catalog of bursts detected by the two instruments includes 2201 events; their basic parameters are given. The large size of the sample of bursts makes it one of the most representative of the existing one and allows various statistical studies of bursts to be performed. In particular, we have constructed the dependence of the mean rate of type I bursts from bursters on the luminosity (accretion rate), revealed an appreciable burst rate from sources with a near-Eddington luminosity, and investigated the population of multiple bursts with a recurrence time much shorter than the time it takes for a critical mass of matter required for the initiation of an explosion to be accumulated on the neutron star surface. Almost all of the detected bursts are associated with already known bursters,we have found only one previously unknown burster, IGRJ17380-3749, in the archival data, and one more known, but poorly studied source, AX J1754.2-2754, has been identified as a burster. Several similar sources have previously been identified as bursters directly during the INTEGRAL observations.
IGR J17591−2342 is an accreting millisecond X-ray pulsar, discovered with INTEGRAL, which went into outburst around July 21, 2018. To better understand the physics acting in these systems during the ...outburst episode, we performed detailed temporal-, timing-, and spectral analyses across the 0.3–300 keV band using data from NICER,
XMM-Newton
,
NuSTAR
, and INTEGRAL. The hard X-ray 20–60 keV outburst profile covering ∼85 days is composed of four flares. Over the course of the maximum of the last flare, we discovered a type-I thermonuclear burst in INTEGRAL JEM-X data, posing constraints on the source distance. We derived a distance of 7.6 ± 0.7 kpc, adopting Eddington-limited photospheric radius expansion and assuming anisotropic emission. In the timing analysis, using all NICER 1–10 keV monitoring data, we observed a rather complex set of behaviours starting with a spin-up period (MJD 58345–58364), followed by a frequency drop (MJD 58364–58370), an episode of constant frequency (MJD 58370–58383), concluded by irregular behaviour till the end of the outburst. The 1–50 keV phase distributions of the pulsed emission, detected up to ∼120 keV using INTEGRAL ISGRI data, was decomposed in three Fourier harmonics showing that the pulsed fraction of the fundamental increases from ∼10% to ∼17% going from ∼1.5 to ∼4 keV, while the harder photons arrive earlier than the soft photons for energies ≲10 keV. The total emission spectrum of IGR J17591−2342 across the 0.3–150 keV band could adequately be fitted in terms of an absorbed
COMP
PS model yielding as best fit parameters a column density of
N
H
= (2.09 ± 0.05) × 10
22
cm
−2
, a blackbody seed photon temperature
k
T
bb, seed
of 0.64 ± 0.02 keV, electron temperature
k
T
e
= 38.8 ± 1.2 keV and Thomson optical depth
τ
T
= 1.59 ± 0.04. The fit normalisation results in an emission area radius of 11.3 ± 0.5 km adopting a distance of 7.6 kpc. Finally, the results are discussed within the framework of accretion physics- and X-ray thermonuclear burst theory.
We present the results of the analysis of the SRG/ART-XC observation of the Supergiant Fast X-ray Transient IGR J16195-4545 performed on March 3, 2021. Six bright flares are present in the light ...curve, with no significant change in hardness occuring during these flares. The spectrum is described with an absorbed power law model with a high energy exponential cutoff showing heavy absorption, with
and
,
keV. Adopting the Bayesian block decomposition of the light curve, we measured the properties of the observed flares (duration, rise time, waiting time, released energy and pre-flare luminosity), which are consistent with the quasi-spherical subsonic accretion model. The stellar wind velocity of the supergiant is estimated to be
km s
. Additionally, the system was found to have an unusual near-IR variability.
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