| 19th of January 2021 |
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| ASKAP observations of a new X-Ray Binary |
| by Chauhan et al. |
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On 2019 January 26, MAXI (the Monitor of All-sky X-ray Image)
discovered an uncatalogued X-ray Binary system, now known as MAXI
J1348–630. ASKAP observed MAXI J1348–630 on 2019 February 13 for 9
hours using the full array of 36 dishes, with 36 overlapping
beams. ASKAP's large field of view and high angular resolution (∼25
arcseconds) allowed the simultaneous detection of HI absorption
towards both MAXI J1348–630 and a set of nearby extragalactic sources,
enabling upper and lower limits to be placed on the distance to the
source.
The figure above is an ASKAP continuum image of the MAXI J1348–630 field created by mosaicing four of ASKAP's 36 beams: 14, 15, 20 and 21. The image has a size of 1.7 × 1.5 degrees. The location of MAXI J1348–630 is marked with the red circle, and the comparison extragalactic sources are indicated by the blue squares. Residual uncertainties remain around the bright (> 1 Jy) extragalctic sources at the level of 1–2%, due to remaining calibration and deconvolution errors. MAXI J1348–630 was detected in the ASKAP data with a flux density of 155 ± 2 mJy at 1.42 GHz. More details are given in the paper, published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. |