No Arabic abstract
We present deep observations of the field of the magnetar CXOJ164710.2-455216 in the star cluster Westerlund 1, obtained in the near-infrared with the adaptive optics camera NACO@VLT. We detected a possible candidate counterpart at the {em Chandra} position of the magnetar, of magnitudes $mathrm{J} = 23.5 pm 0.2$, $mathrm{H} = 21.0 pm 0.1$, and $mathrm{K}_mathrm{S} = 20.4 pm 0.1$. The K$_{rm S}$-band measurements available for two epochs (2006 and 2013) do not show significant signs of variability but only a marginal indication that the flux varied (at the 2 $sigma$ level), consistent with the fact that the observations were taken when CXOJ164710.2-455216 was in quiescence. At the same time, we also present colour--magnitude and colour--colour diagrams in the J, H, and K$_{rm S}$ bands from the 2006 epoch only, the only one with observations in all three bands, showing that the candidate counterpart lies in the main bulk of objects describing a relatively well--defined sequence. Therefore, based on its colours and lack of variability, we cannot yet associate the candidate counterpart to CXOJ164710.2-455216. Future near-infrared observations of the field, following-up a source outburst, would be crucial to confirm the association from the detection of near-infrared variability and colour evolution.
We report on data obtained with the Chandra, XMM-Newton, Suzaku and Swift X-ray observatories, following the 2006 outburst of the Anomalous X-ray Pulsar CXO J164710.2-455216. We find no evidence for the very large glitch and rapid exponential decay as was reported previously for this source. We set a 3 sigma upper limit on any fractional frequency increase at the time of the outburst of Delta nu/nu < 1.5 x 10^{-5}. Our timing analysis, based on the longest time baseline yet, yields a spin-down rate for the pulsar that implies a surface dipolar magnetic field of ~9 x 10^{13} G, although this could be biased high by possible recovery from an undetected glitch. We also present an analysis of the source flux and spectral evolution, and find no evidence for long-term spectral relaxation post-outburst as was previously reported.
We report results of X-ray timing analyses for the low-field magnetar CXOU~J164710.2$-$455216 which exhibited multiple outbursts. We use data taken with NICER, NuSTAR, Chandra, and Neil-Gehrels-Swift telescopes between 2017 and 2018 when the source was in an active state. We perform semi-phase-coherent timing analyses to measure the spin parameters and a spin-inferred magnetic-field strength ($B_s$) of the magnetar. Using a semi-phase-coherent method, we infer the magnetic field strengths to be $3-4times 10^{13}rm G$ at the observation period ($sim$MJD 58000), and by comparing with previous frequency measurements (MJD 54000) a long-term average value of $B_s$ is estimated to be $approx4times 10^{13}rm G$. So this analysis may add CXOU~J164710.2$-$455216 to the ranks of low-field magnetars. The inferred characteristic age ($tau_c$) is 1--2 Myr which is smaller than the age of Westerlund~1, so the magnetars association with the star cluster is still secure. For the low dipole field and the large age, recent multiple outbursts observed from the source are hard to explain unless it has strong magnetic multipole components. We also find timing anomalies around outburst epochs, which suggests that there may be spin-down torque applied to the magnetar near the epochs as was proposed in magnetar models.
Suzaku TOO observation of the anomalous X-ray pulsar CXOU J164710.2-455216 was performed on 2006 September 23--24 for a net exposure of 38.8 ks. During the observation, the XIS was operated in 1/8 window option to achieve a time resolution of 1 s. Pulsations are clearly detected in the XIS light curves with a barycenter corrected pulse period of 10.61063(2) s. The XIS pulse profile shows 3 peaks of different amplitudes with RMS fractional amplitude of ~11% in 0.2--6.0 keV energy band. Though the source was observed with the HXD of Suzaku, the data is highly contaminated by the nearby bright X-ray source GX 340+0 which was in the HXD field of view. The 1-10 keV XIS spectra are well fitted by two blackbody components. The temperatures of two blackbody components are found to be 0.61+/-0.01 keV and 1.22+/-0.06 keV and the value of the absorption column density is 1.73+/-0.03 x 10^{22} atoms cm^{-2}. The observed source flux in 1-10 keV energy range is calculated to be 2.6 x 10^{-11} ergs cm^{-2} s^{-1} with significant contribution from the soft blackbody component (kT = 0.61 keV). Pulse phase resolved spectroscopy of XIS data shows that the flux of the soft blackbody component consists of three narrow peaks, whereas the flux of the other component shows a single peak over the pulse period of the AXP. The blackbody radii changes between 2.2-2.7 km and 0.28-0.38 km (assuming the source distance to be 5 kpc) over pulse phases for the soft and hard components, respectively. The details of the results obtained from the timing and spectral analysis is presented.
We present the results of prompt optical follow-up of the electromagnetic counterpart of the gravitational-wave event GW170817 by the Transient Optical Robotic Observatory of the South Collaboration (TOROS). We detected highly significant dimming in the light curves of the counterpart (Delta g=0.17+-0.03 mag, Delta r=0.14+-0.02 mag, Delta i=0.10 +- 0.03 mag) over the course of only 80 minutes of observations obtained ~35 hr after the trigger with the T80-South telescope. A second epoch of observations, obtained ~59 hr after the event with the EABA 1.5m telescope, confirms the fast fading nature of the transient. The observed colors of the counterpart suggest that this event was a blue kilonova relatively free of lanthanides.
We have carried out observations of the newly-discovered magnetar in the direction of Sagittarius A* using the Australia Telescope Compact Array in four frequency bands from 4.5 to 20 GHz. Radio pulsations are clearly detected at all frequencies. We measure the pulsars dispersion measure to be 1650 +/- 50 pc/cm^3, the highest of any of the known pulsars. Once Faraday rotation has been taken into account, the pulse profile is more than 80% linearly polarized at all frequencies and has a small degree (5%) of circular polarization. The rotation measure of -67000 +/- 500$ rad/m^2 is the largest (in magnitude) ever measured for a pulsar but still a factor 8 smaller than Sgr A* itself. The combination of the dispersion and rotation measures implies an integrated magnetic field strength of -50uG along the line of sight. The flux density appears to have increased by about a factor of two between observations made 30 days apart. This object therefore joins the small class of radio emitting magnetars.