With a stroke of luck, we caught the supergiant fast X-ray transient IGRJ18410-0535 undergoing a bright X-ray flare by using ESA's XMM-Newton X-ray observatory. This outburst of X-rays, which lasted about four hours, was due to a sudden increase in the rate at which the neutron star was accreting matter from its companion, a blue supergiant star. By monitoring this phenomenon in unprecedented detail, the data provide the first, substantive evidence to explain such luminosity variations in this type of binary system; the flare appears to be due to the ingestion of a massive clump of matter by the neutron star. |
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ABSTRACT
by Enrico Bozzo on 2011-06-28 | >> INTEGRAL science results | >> All science results |