While examining RXTE data for the MINBAR project two summers ago, Jean in 't Zand unexpectedly discovered a brand-new bursting source, XMMU J181227.8—181234. Now PhD student Adelle Goodwin's paper on the source has been accepted by MNRAS. The source is quite unusual; distant and hence low-intensity, but apparently a high accretion rate leading to frequent (but weak) bursts. The shape of the bursts strongly implies H-poor accreted composition, but we also found evidence for short recurrence-time bursts, which previously have been seen only in H-rich accretors. Hopefully the source will go into outburst again sometime soon and we can gather more information on it's properties.

Read the paper (MNRAS 486, 4149, 2019)

Labels: 2019, /postgrads