Bright X-ray transient in the LMC
ATel #11182; R. Saxton (ESAC), A. M. Read (Leicester), D. Y. Li (NAOC)
on 17 Jan 2018; 09:44 UT
Credential Certification: Richard Saxton (richard.saxton@sciops.esa.int)
Subjects: X-ray, Transient
We report a bright X-ray transient in the LMC from an XMM-Newton slew made on
5th January 2018. The source, XMMSL2 J053629.4-675940, had a soft X-ray (0.2-2 keV) count rate
in the EPIC-pn detector, medium filter of 1.82+/-0.56 c/s, equivalent to a flux Fx=2.3+/-0.7E-12 ergs/s/cm2 for a nominal spectrum of a power-law of slope 2 absorbed by a column NH=3E20 cm^-2.
The slew position is RA: 05h36m29.4s, DEC: -67d59m40s with a 1-sigma error circle of 8 arcseconds, lying at 7 arcseconds from the XMM-Newton serendipitous catalogue source, 3XMM J053630.3-675935, which with a flux Fx~1.1E-14 ergs/s/cm2 (2012-03-24), is a factor ~200 fainter than the slew measurement. The source was not detected in the ROSAT all-sky-survey (upper limit Fx<1.3E-13 ergs/s/cm2).
Assuming that 3XMM J053630.3-675935 is the counterpart then the best available position is
RA: 05h36m30.35s, DEC: -67d59m35.9s with an error of ~2 arcseconds.
We encourage follow-up observations to establish the identity of this object.
