Themed Observing Day This Friday - the X-ray Binary, IGR J00291+5934
This Friday, the FT team are co-ordinating an observing run to monitor the brightness of an X-ray Binary.
The system, known as IGR J00291+5934, is an accreting Millisecond X-ray
Pulsar (MSXP). This means that it is comprised of two components, one
being a neutron star, the other a 'normal' star, with a mass about 5-8%
that of our Sun.
This system has recently risen in brightness from a magnitude of R ~
23, where it was not visible to the FT, to a magnitude of ~ 18. This
rise has been accompanied by a rise in the amount of X-rays detected by
X-ray satellites such as Swift and RXTE.
Whilst it's not uncommon for some of these systems to brighten
dramatically like this, 00291 (to its friends) is extremely rare in
that it has repeated this behaviour twice in the last month. Collecting
more data now will help researchers within the FT Team to understand
better the processes that are at work in this system.
What we need for Friday are users willing to help us observe this
target for 30 minutes at a time, using FT North, from 11:30 UT until
14:30 UT. These sessions do not show as available on the bookings
system, but can be allocated to interested users.
We would like the users to observe the system in one filter only
(i') for 200 seconds for as many times as they can during their slots.
Interested users are asked to contact fraser.lewis@faulkes-telescope.com
Read about IGR J00291+5934 here
