X-ray emission at the position of SN2013ai
ATel #4901; R. Margutti, A. Soderberg (Harvard University), D. Pooley (Sam Houston State University)
on 20 Mar 2013; 19:53 UT
Credential Certification: Raffaella Margutti (rmargutti@cfa.harvard.edu)
Subjects: X-ray, Supernovae
We report X-ray observations of the nearby type II supernova 2013ai (ATEL #4849, #4851) discovered by Zadko on 2013 March 1 UT as part of a multi-wavelength campaign (Atel #4862, #4866). Using 7.7 ks of Swift-XRT observations obtained between March 2nd - March 6th we find evidence for an X-ray source at a position consistent with SN2013ai with count-rate (2.0 +/- 0.7)e-3 cps in the 0.3-10 keV energy band. The Galactic neutral hydrogen column density in the direction of the transient is 8.81e20 cm-2 (Kalberla 2005). Assuming a simple power-law spectral model with photon index Gamma=2, this translates into an unabsorbed 0.3-10 keV flux F~1e-13 erg/s/cm2 and a luminosity L~8.3e39 erg/s at the distance of NGC 2207 (26.5 Mpc from NED).
Using pre-explosion images of NGC 2207 acquired by the Chandra X-ray Observatory in July 2010 (id=11228), we note the presence of an X-ray source lying at ~8" from the SN position. This source contributes to the measured XRT flux at the level of ~2e-14 erg/s/cm2.
We thank the Swift team for scheduling these ToO observations.
