Improved position of the new X-ray transient XTE J1637-498
ATel #1700; R. Wijnands, M. Linares, N. Degenaar (UvA), C. B. Markwardt (CRESST/U. Md./NASA/GSFC)
on 5 Sep 2008; 21:23 UT
Distributed as an Instant Email Notice Request For Observations
Credential Certification: Rudy Wijnands (rudy@space.mit.edu)
Subjects: X-ray, Request for Observations, Binary, Black Hole, Neutron Star, Transient
Referred to by ATel #: 1704
Following the discovery of the new X-ray transient XTE
J1637-498 (Atel #1699), we obtained a short (nearly 1 ksec) observation
using the Swift/XRT in PC mode on 2008-09-04 at 18:15 UT. We
detected one relatively bright source within the ~6 arcminutes PCA
error circle at a position of RA=16:37:02.995, Dec=-49:51:37 (J2000),
with an estimated uncertainty of 3.8 arcseconds radius (90%
confidence).
The X-ray spectrum of the source can be adequately (a reduced chi^2 of
0.7) described by an absorbed power-law with a column density of
2.3+/-0.9E22 cmE-2 and a photon index of 1.5+/-0.4 and an absorbed
2-10 keV flux of ~2.7E-11 erg/s/cm^2. The X-ray spectrum is consistent
with the source being a low-mass X-ray binary, but due to the large
errors on the spectral parameters other types of system cannot be
excluded (i.e., high-mass X-ray binaries). We urge follow-up
observations in optical and near-IR to try to find the counterpart of
the transient at these wavelengths.
We thank the Swift team for approving and scheduling our observation.
