2012/08/30 by Ş. Balman, Solen Balman, Balman, Solen
Physics and Astronomy · #Astro and Planetary Science #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE) #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph.HE
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1208.6120
This paper has been withdrawn because the author has a longer and more detailed manuscript on the same discovery under review in a different Journal
openalex publication_date 2012/08/30 · arxiv created 2013/05/31 · arxiv updated 2013/06/03 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
I resolved and detected an X-ray nebulosity around the recurrent nova T Pyx using a 98.8 ksec observation with the ACIS-S detector on-board the Chandra Observatory during the quiescent phase of the nova before its outburst in 2011. The nebula shows an elliptical shape with an inner semi-major axis ∼ 0.45 arc sec and an outer semi-major axis ∼ 0.9 arc sec which indicates a torus-like or a ring-like shell structure around the nova. There is also a (conical) elongation towards the southern direction of about 1.85 arc sec. This structure may be part of a bipolar outflow from the source/nova. The count rate of the nebulosity is 0.0025±0.0010 c s-1 and that of the the central binary is ∼ 0.003 c s-1 over the 0.2-9.0 keV energy range. The best fitted spectrum of the X-ray nebula is a two-component plasma model (e.g., a double MEKAL) with ∼ 0.6 keV and ∼ 2.2 keV along with two different neutral hydrogen column densities of (0.2-0.9)× 1022 cm-2 and (3.0-26.0)× 1022 cm-2 for the two temperatures, respectively. I calculate an absorbed X-ray flux of (0.6-10.0)×10-14 erg cm-2 s-1 with a luminosity of (0.08-2.0)×1032 erg s-1 (at 3.5 kpc) for the X-ray nebula. The estimated shocked mass is ≤1.8×10-5 M\odot. The central source spectrum can be fitted by a single MEKAL model with a temperature 9.2<-5.4 keV yielding a luminosity of about 5.2×1031 erg s-1. The orbital period of the system is detected in the Chandra light curve.