Open AccessDiscovery of the near‐infrared counterpart of the X‐ray transient XTE J1908+094
Author(s) -
Chaty S.,
Mignani R. P.,
Israel G. L.
Publication year - 2002
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.1365-8711.2002.06097.x
Subject(s) - physics , astrophysics , photometry (optics) , astrometry , near infrared spectroscopy , flux (metallurgy) , astronomy , infrared , stars , optics , materials science , metallurgy
We report on the identification in the near‐infrared (NIR) of the counterpart to the newly discovered black hole candidate XTE J1908+094, achieved partly through ‘Target of Opportunity’ (ToO) observations carried out at the ESO/NTT. Accurate astrometry and photometry performed on three sets of observations of the source covering 1.7 months have shown a decrease of its NIR flux, consistent with the X‐ray decay. After dereddening for the measured column density, we computed the absolute magnitudes of the source for different distances. We derive that the source is a low‐mass system and that the companion star is a main sequence star with a spectral type later than K .