Tomasz Nowakowski is a member of the physics.org community.
The Monitor of All-sky X-ray Image (MAXI) instrument has been used to detect a new super giant fast X-ray Transient. The MAXI J0709 159 Transient was found in the constellation Canis Majoris and lasted about three hours. There was a paper published on the arXiv pre-print server.
A normal star or a white dwarf can be used to transfer mass into a black hole. The companion star's mass is used to divide it into two X-ray binaries.
HMXBs with supergiant companions are called SFXTs. They show a lot of X-ray flaring activity and a lot of fast rise times associated with supergiant stars.
Astronomers in Beijing, China, have detected a new SFXT called MAXI J0709158. The Transient was identified by the MAXI instrument on the International Space Station. NuSTAR, Swift, and eROSITA were used to conduct follow-up observations of this source.
The source was first detected at UT 10:42 but was not found in the next transit at UT 12:1. It was found again in the next scanned at UT 13:48 The source showed a large intensity variation within 3 hours.
MAXI J0709 had a large swing from the quiescence to the flare peak. The optical position of MAXI J0709 was consistent with that of LY CMa, a Be star. The Transient had an instantaneous 4–10 keV fluxes.
The findings show that MAXI J0709 is indeed an SFXT. LY CMa is surrounded by dense clumps. The suggestion is that MAXI J0709 should be classified as an evolved be fast X-ray Transient.
There should be an intermediate character between BeXBs and sgXBs.
Few objects of this type, such as X Persei, are known to show short time-scale variabilities like flares. MAXI J0709 is an extreme case of an BeXB.
More information: Mutsumi Sugizaki et al, Discovery of a new supergiant fast X-ray transient MAXI J0709−159 associated with the Be star LY CMa. arXiv:2207.01969v2 [astro-ph.HE], arxiv.org/abs/2207.01969There is a science network.
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