Following the neutron star transient XTE J1701-462 as it turns into quiescence.
ATel #1178; Diego Altamirano, Rudy Wijnands, Nathalie Degennar, Piergiorgio Casella (UvA), Jeroen Homan (MIT), Tomaso Belloni, (INAF/OAB), Sergio Campana (INAF/OAB).
on 11 Aug 2007; 23:52 UT
Distributed as an Instant Email Notice Transients
Credential Certification: Rudy Wijnands (rudy@space.mit.edu)
Subjects: X-ray, Binary, Neutron Star, Transient
Following the latest reports on the outburst of the transient neutron
star low-mass X-ray binary XTE J1701-462 (ATel #1144, #1165),
we observed the source for 3 times with Swift. Each observation lasted
for approximately ~2 ksec. We found that on August 2nd, 6th and 8th the
energy spectra is well fitted with power law indices of ~2, ~2.3 and
3.2, respectively, and we obtained unabsorbed fluxes of ~1.4E-10, ~3.2E-11 and ~9.4E-13 erg/cm2/s (2-10 keV). In all cases we kept the
column density Nh fixed to 2 x 10^{22} cm^2.
These fluxes show that the source has accelerated its decrease
in count rate in the last two weeks. We will continue to follow
the rapid decay of the source with Chandra observations scheduled
for the 12th and 19th of August. Observations at other
wavelengths are strongly encouraged.
We thank the Swift team for a prompt scheduling of our monitoring observations.
