2009/02/17 by K. Wiersema, D. M. Russell, N. Degenaar +8
Physics and Astronomy · #Accretion (finance) #Astronomy #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Binary number #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Low Mass #Nebula #Neutron star #Physics #Stars #Telescope #astro-ph.HE
paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/j.1745-3933.2009.00643.x
Accepted for publication in MNRAS-Letters; 5 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables. Quality of figure 2 downgraded because of arXiv file size limits
arxiv created 2009/02/17 · openalex publication_date 2009/05/28 · arxiv updated 2015/05/12 · openalex created_date 2021/02/01 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Abstract In a multiwavelength programme dedicated to identifying optical counterparts of faint persistent X-ray sources in the Galactic bulge, we find an accurate X-ray position of SAX J1712.6–3739 through Chandra observations, and discover its faint optical counterpart using our data from EFOSC2 on the ESO 3.6-m telescope. We find this source to be a highly extincted neutron star low-mass X-ray binary (LMXB) with blue optical colours. We serendipitously discover a relatively bright and large bow shock shaped nebula in our deep narrow-band Hα imaging, most likely associated with the X-ray binary. A nebula like this has never been observed before in association with a LMXB, and as such provides a unique laboratory to study the energetics of accretion and jets. We put forward different models to explain the possible ways the LMXB may form this nebulosity, and outline how they can be confirmed observationally.