The Continued Spectral Evolution of the Neutron Star RX J0720.4-3125

2004/05/20 by Jacco Vink, Cor de Vries, Cor P. de Vries +3 · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #astro-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/422812

published as Astrophys.J. 609 (2004) L75-L78 · To be published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. Contains 4 pages with 3 figures, including 1 color figure

arxiv created 2004/05/20 · openalex publication_date 2004/06/08 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04

Abstract

We observed the isolated neutron star RX J0720.4-3125 with Chandra 's Low Energy Transmission Grating Spectrometer, following the XMM-Newton discovery of the long-term spectral evolution of this source. The new observation shows that the spectrum of RX J0720.4-3125 has continued to change in the course of 5 months. It has remained hard, similar to the last XMM-Newton observation, but the strong depression observed with XMM-Newton at long wavelengths has disappeared. Contrary to the XMM-Newton observations, the new Chandra observation shows that the flux increase at short wavelength and the decrease at long wavelength do not necessarily occur simultaneously.

Cited by

• The continued spectral and temporal evolution of RX J0720.4-3125
• The magnificent seven: magnetic fields and surface temperature distributions
• A self-consistent model of isolated neutron stars: the case of the X-ray pulsar RX J0720.4-3125