An HI absorption distance to the black hole candidate X-ray binary MAXI J1535-571
| Autor: | Jai Verdhan Chauhan, B. S. Koribalski, G. E. Anderson, Matthew Whiting, C. S. Anderson, Balthasar T. Indermuehle, W. Raja, James R. Allison, Arash Bahramian, John D. Bunton, Elizabeth K. Mahony, Aidan Hotan, James Miller-Jones |
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| Rok vydání: | 2019 |
| Předmět: |
Absorption spectroscopy
Astrophysics::High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena X-ray binary FOS: Physical sciences Binary number Astrophysics Astrophysics::Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics 01 natural sciences Luminosity law.invention Telescope Radio telescope symbols.namesake law 0103 physical sciences Absorption (logic) 010303 astronomy & astrophysics Astrophysics::Galaxy Astrophysics High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE) Physics 010308 nuclear & particles physics Astrophysics::Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics Astronomy and Astrophysics Space and Planetary Science Eddington luminosity symbols Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena |
| Zdroj: | Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 488(1) |
| ISSN: | 1365-2966 0035-8711 |
| Popis: | With the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) we monitored the black hole candidate X-ray binary MAXI J1535--571 over seven epochs from 21 September to 2 October 2017. Using ASKAP observations, we studied the HI absorption spectrum from gas clouds along the line-of-sight and thereby constrained the distance to the source. The maximum negative radial velocities measured from the HI absorption spectra for MAXI J1535--571 and an extragalactic source in the same field of view are $-69\pm4$ km s$^{-1}$ and $-89\pm4$ km s$^{-1}$, respectively. This rules out the far kinematic distance ($9.3^{+0.5}_{-0.6}$ kpc), giving a most likely distance of $4.1^{+0.6}_{-0.5}$ kpc, with a strong upper limit of the tangent point at $6.7^{+0.1}_{-0.2}$ kpc. At our preferred distance, the peak unabsorbed luminosity of MAXI J1535--571 was $>78$ per cent of the Eddington luminosity, and shows that the soft-to-hard spectral state transition occurred at the very low luminosity of 1.2 -- 3.4 $\times$ 10$^{-5}$ times the Eddington luminosity. Finally, this study highlights the capabilities of new wide-field radio telescopes to probe Galactic transient outbursts, by allowing us to observe both a target source and a background comparison source in a single telescope pointing. Revised after favorable referee report from MNRAS Letters |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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