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Published September 2018 | Published + Accepted Version
Journal Article Open

Detection of a 23.6 min periodic modulation in the optical counterpart of 3XMMJ051034.6–670353

Abstract

We present high speed optical photometric observations made using the NTT and ULTRACAM of the optical counterpart of 3XMMJ051034.6–670353, which was recently identified as an X-ray source showing a modulation on a period of 23.6 min. Although the optical counterpart is faint (g = 21.4), we find that the u′g′r′ light curves show a periodic modulation on a period which is consistent with the X-ray period. We also obtained three low resolution spectra of 3XMMJ051034.6–670353 using the Gemini South Telescope and GMOS. There is no evidence for strong emission lines in the optical spectrum of 3XMMJ051034.6–670353. We compare and contrast the optical and X-ray observations of 3XMMJ051034.6–670353 with the ultra compact binaries HM Cnc and V407 Vul. We find we can identify a distribution of binary masses in which stable direct impact accretion can occur.

Additional Information

© 2018 ESO. Article published by EDP Sciences. Received 25 April 2018; Accepted 7 June 2018; Published online 21 September 2018. This paper is based on observations collected at the European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere under ESO programme 0102.D-0151. We thank Steven Parsons and Jay Farihi for carrying out the observations. Some results presented in this paper are based on observations obtained at the Gemini Observatory, proposal ID GS-2016B-FT-25, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under a cooperative agreement with the NSF on behalf of the Gemini partnership: the National Science Foundation (United States), the National Research Council (Canada), CONICYT (Chile), Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación Productiva (Argentina), and Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação (Brazil). The authors thank the staff at the Gemini-South observatory for performing the observations in service mode. Armagh Observatory and Planetarium is core funded by the Northern Ireland Executive through the Department for Communities. TRM and DS thank STFC for support via grants ST/L000733/1 and ST/P000495/1. VSD and ULTRACAM thank STFC for support via consolidated grant ST/J001589.

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Published - aa33305-18.pdf

Accepted Version - 1806.02776.pdf

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Created:
August 19, 2023
Modified:
October 18, 2023