MeerKAT detection of EXO 1846-031 at 1.3 GHz

ATel #12992; David Williams (Oxford), Rob Fender (Oxford/UCT), Patrick Woudt (UCT), James Miller-Jones (Curtin) on behalf of the ThunderKAT collaboration
on 6 Aug 2019; 15:29 UT
Credential Certification: David Williams (david.williams@physics.ox.ac.uk)

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The black hole candidate X-ray binary EXO 1846-031 was reported to be in outburst in the X-rays by MAXI (ATEL #12968). It has since been observed with Swift (ATEL #12969) and NICER (ATEL #12976) which confirm the source is in outburst.

Miller-Jones et al. have also reported the first detection of a radio counterpart (ATEL #12977).

We observed EXO 1846-031 at 1.28 GHz using the MeerKAT radio array, as part of the ThunderKAT Large Survey Programme ( http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2017arXiv171104132F ).

We observed the target field on 2019 August 04 starting at 20:00:25.3 UTC for 15 minutes. We used standard reduction techniques, using PKS J1939-6342 as the primary flux and band pass calibrator and NVSS J191109-200655 as the phase calibrator. We detect a source consistent with the VLA position of EXO 1846-031 (ATEL #12977) at a peak flux density of 6.0+/-0.2 mJy/beam. The rms noise level in a region near to the phase centre is 40uJy/beam. Further observations are ongoing.

ThunderKAT will run for 5 years and aims to monitor all bright, active, southern hemisphere X-ray binaries in the radio band. For further information on this programme please contact Rob Fender and/or Patrick Woudt.

We thank the staff at the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO) for their rapid scheduling of these observations. The MeerKAT telescope is operated by SARAO, which is a facility of the National Research Foundation, an agency of the Department of Science and Technology.