MAXI J0206-749: Swift identification as RX J0209.6-7427

ATel #13303; J. A. Kennea (PSU), A. Bahramian (ICRAR), P. A. Evans, A. P. Beardmore (U Leicester), H. A. Krimm (CRESST/GSFC/USRA), P. Romano (INAF-IASFPA), K. Yamaoka (Nagoya U.), M. Serino (RIKEN), H. Negoro (Nihon U.)
on 21 Nov 2019; 17:40 UT
Credential Certification: Jamie A. Kennea (kennea@astro.psu.edu)

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AT 11:23UT on November 21st, 2019, Swift performed a 15-point tiling, with 100s exposure per tile, of the error circle of MAXI J0206-749 (ATEL #13300), a new transient discovered near the SMC. We find one bright X-ray source in the XRT Photon Counting mode data, at the following coordinates: RA/Dec(J2000) = 32.39102, -74.45348. which is equivalent to:

RA(J2000) = 02h 09m 33.85s,
Dec(J2000) = -74d 27m 12.5s

with an estimated uncertainty of 2.8 arc-seconds radius (90% confidence). This position lies 2.9 arc-seconds from the known HMXB RX J0209.6-7427. The source lies 31 arc-minutes from the center of the MAXI error, region, with no other bright source detected, and therefore we suggest that MAXI J0206-749 is in fact detection of an outburst from RX J0209.6-7427.

The spectrum of the source is well described by a power-law with photon index 0.7 +/- 0.4, with a measured flux of 3.8 x 10^-10 erg/s/cm^2 (0.5 - 10 keV).

In the short (100s) XRT observation, the source does not show significant variability. The source was outside of the UVOT field of view.

This work was supported by NASA Grant 80NSSC19K1383, awarded by the Swift Guest Investigator program.