Swift/XRT observations of the region near PSR B1259-63
ATel #2782; A. K.H. Kong (NTHU, Taiwan)
on 8 Aug 2010; 21:32 UT
Credential Certification: Albert Kong (akong@phys.nthu.edu.tw)
Subjects: X-ray, Binary, Transient, Pulsar
Referred to by ATel #: 3046
Following the AGILE detection of a gamma-ray transient source in the region of PSR B1259-63 (ATel #2772), Swift/XRT observed the region around PSR B1259-63 on 2010-08-08 00:15 (UT) for about 3.2 ks. PSR B1259-63 and 2RXP J130159.6-635806 are the only bright sources in the field-of-view. For PSR B1259-63, the source spectrum is best described by an absorbed power-law with N_H=3.3e21 cm^-2 and a photon index of 1.9. The absorbed 1-10 keV flux is 2.4e-12 erg/s/cm^2. PSR B1259-63 is currently about 120 days from the next periastron approach. The Swift spectrum is entirely consistent with previous XMM-Newton and BeppoSAX spectra taken at similar period (Chernyakova et al. 2006).
2RXP J130159.6-635806 is a 700s accreting X-ray pulsar (Chernyakova et al. 2005). During the Swift observations, the source spectrum can be fit by an absorbed power-law with N_H=2.8e22 cm^-2 and a photon index of 1.1. The absorbed 2-10 keV flux is 3.8e-11 erg/s/cm^2. The spectrum as well as the flux level are consistent with previous observations taken between 1993 and 2004 (Chernyakova et al. 2005).
We conclude that there is no unusual X-ray activity near the region of PSR B1259-63 during the Swift observations.
