The long, faint outburst of IGR J17062-6143
ATel #1853; R. A. Remillard and A. M. Levine (MIT), for the RXTE All Sky Monitor team at MIT and NASA/GSFC
on 24 Nov 2008; 20:38 UT
Credential Certification: Ron Remillard (rr@space.mit.edu)
Subjects: X-ray, Transient
Referred to by ATel #: 4219
We have processed RXTE ASM data to construct the mission light curve
for IGR J17062-6143 (ATel #1840), using the Swift XRT position. We
first excluded camera dwells with a high background rate, filtering
out dwells with channel A X-ray background < 12.0 ASM c/s. We then
binned the flux measurements to intervals of one week. The resulting
light curve shows that the source is a long-term, faint transient, and
the current outburst began in late 2005 or early 2006. Between MJD
50088 (first observation) and 53600, the source is not detected. The
weighted average flux is 1.3 (1.0) mCrab at 1.5-12 keV, with an
uncertainty set by the systematic limit for ASM observations of faint
sources. The source is weakly detected at 3.1 (1.0) mCrab during
53600 to 53800, rising to 5.1 (1.0) mCrab between 53800 and 54540, and
6.3 (1.0) mCrab between 54540 and the present day (54794). In the
most recent interval, the X-ray color, HR2 = 1.3 (0.3), suggests a
soft X-ray transient rather than a classical accretion-powered pulsar
(see Cackett, Wijnands, and Remillard, 2006, MNRAS, 369, 1965).
