Open AccessDiscovery of X‐ray pulsations in the Be/X‐ray binary LS 992/RX J0812.4–3114
Author(s) -
Reig Pablo,
Roche Paul
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
monthly notices of the royal astronomical society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.058
H-Index - 383
eISSN - 1365-2966
pISSN - 0035-8711
DOI - 10.1046/j.1365-8711.1999.02463.x
Subject(s) - physics , pulsar , astrophysics , luminosity , accretion (finance) , x ray , x ray binary , x ray pulsar , pulse (music) , light curve , range (aeronautics) , binary number , astronomy , neutron star , optics , detector , materials science , arithmetic , mathematics , galaxy , composite material
We report on the discovery of X‐ray pulsations from the Be/X‐ray system LS 992/RX J0812.4–3114 during an RXTE observation. From a timing analysis of the source we obtained a barycentric pulse period of 31.8851±0.0004 s. The pulse profile is highly structured and departs from a pure sinusoidal shape. It shows a sharp dip that may indicate absorption by the accretion flow. The energy spectrum in the range 3–30 keV can be fitted by a power‐law model with an exponential cut‐off in accordance with other X‐ray pulsars. The X‐ray luminosity is estimated to be ∼ 1.1× 10 36 erg s ‐1 in the energy range 3–30 keV, assuming a distance of ∼ 9 kpc.