We report on the identification of the optical counterpart to the recently detected INTEGRAL transient IGR J18245-2452 in the Galactic globular cluster M28. From the analysis of a multi epoch HST dataset we have identified a strongly variable star positionally coincident with the radio and Chandra X-ray sources associated to the INTEGRAL transient. The star has been detected during both a quiescent and an outburst state. In the former case it appears as a faint, unperturbed main sequence star, while in the latter state it is about two magnitudes brighter and slightly bluer than main sequence stars. We also detected Halpha excess during the outburst state, suggestive of active accretion processes by the neutron star.
A significant fraction of high-mass X-ray binaries are supergiant fast X-ray transients (SFXTs). The prime model for the physics governing their X-ray behaviour suggests that the winds of donor OB supergiants are magnetized. To investigate if magnetic fields are indeed present in the optical counterparts of such systems, we acquired low-resolution spectropolarimetric observations of the two optically brightest SFXTs, IGR J08408-4503 and IGR J11215-5952 with the ESO FORS2 instrument during two different observing runs. No field detection at a significance level of 3sigma was achieved for IGR J0…
IGR J01583+6713 is a new transient source discovered by the INTEGRAL/IBIS hard X-ray surveys. Optical observations suggested that it should be a high mass X-ray binary, but its nature is still unclear. We used the INTEGRAL/IBIS data to study the nature of the transient hard X-ray source IGR J01583+6713 during its outburst. Temporal profiles and spectral properties of IGR J01583+6713 around its outburst on 2005 Dec 6 were obtained. During the outburst, the mean X-ray luminosity reached around $4\times 10^{35}$ erg s$^{-1}$ in the energy range of 20 -- 100 keV. The continuum spectrum can be fitt…
We present the first direct evidence for dense clumps of matter in the companion wind in a Supergiant Fast X-ray Transient (SFXT) binary. This is seen as a brief period of enhanced absorption during one of the bright, fast flares that distinguish these systems. The object under study was IGR J17544-2619, and a total of 236 ks of data were accumulated with the Japanese satellite Suzaku. The activity in this period spans a dynamic range of almost 10000 in luminosity and gives a detailed look at SFXT behavior.
Long-term monitoring of the recently discovered X-ray transient, IGR J17098-3628, by the All Sky Monitor on board the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer, has shown that it displays a long term (~163d) quasi-periodic modulation in the data spanning its "active" state (i.e. approximately MJD 53450-54200). Furthermore, this light-curve is not typical of "classical" soft X-ray transients, in that J17098-3628 has remained active since its initial discovery, and may be more akin to the pseudo-transient EXO0748-676, which is now classified as a persistent Low Mass X-ray Binary. However, EXO0748-676 recently…
Classical Supergiant X-ray Binaries (SGXBs) and Supergiant Fast X-ray Transients (SFXTs) are two types of High-mass X-ray Binaries (HMXBs) that present similar donors but, at the same time, show very different behavior in the X-rays. The reason for this dichotomy of wind-fed HMXBs is still a matter of debate. Among the several explanations that have been proposed, some of them invoke specific stellar wind properties of the donor stars. Only dedicated empiric analysis of the donors' stellar wind can provide the required information to accomplish an adequate test of these theories. However, such…
We report on a 40 ks long, uninterrupted X-ray observation of the candidate supergiant fast X-ray transient (SFXT) IGRJ16418-4532 performed with XMM-Newton on February 23, 2011. This high mass X-ray binary lies in the direction of the Norma arm, at an estimated distance of 13 kpc. During the observation, the source showed strong variability exceeding two orders of magnitudes, never observed before from this source. Its X-ray flux varied in the range from 0.1 counts/s to about 15 counts/s, with several bright flares of different durations (from a few hundreds to a few thousands seconds) and som…
BD+6073 is the optical counterpart of the X-ray source IGR J00370+6122, a probable accretion-powered X-ray pulsar. The X-ray light curve of this binary system shows clear periodicity at 15.7 d, which has been interpreted as repeated outbursts around the periastron of an eccentric orbit. We obtained high-resolution spectra of BD+6073 at different epochs. We used the FASTWind code to generate a stellar atmosphere model to fit the observed spectrum and obtain physical magnitudes. The synthetic spectrum was used as a template for cross-correlation with the observed spectra to measure radial veloci…
We report on the results of a NuSTAR observation of the Supergiant Fast X-ray Transient pulsar IGRJ11215-5952 during the peak of its outburst in June 2017. IGRJ11215-5952 is the only SFXT undergoing strictly periodic outbursts, every 165 days. NuSTAR caught several X-ray flares, spanning a dynamic range of 100, and detected X-ray pulsations at 187.0 s, consistent with previous measurements. The spectrum from the whole observation is well described by an absorbed power-law (with a photon index of 1.4) modified, above 7 keV, by a cutoff with an e-folding energy of 24 keV. A weak emission line is…
Some globular clusters in our Galaxy are noticeably rich in low-mass X-ray binaries. Terzan 5 has the richest population among globular clusters of X- and radio-pulsars and low-mass X-ray binaries. The detection and study of optical/IR counterparts of low-mass X-ray binaries is fundamental to characterizing both the low-mass donor in the binary system and investigating the mechanisms of the formation and evolution of this class of objects. We aim at identifying the near-IR counterpart of the 11 Hz pulsar IGRJ17480-2446 discovered in Terzan 5. Adaptive optics (AO) systems represent the only pos…
The hard X-ray source IGR J11215-5952 is a peculiar transient, displaying very short X-ray outbursts every 165 days. We obtained high-resolution spectra of the optical counterpart, HD 306414, at different epochs, spanning a total of three months, before and around the 2007 February outburst with the combined aims of deriving its astrophysical parameters and searching for orbital modulation. We fit model atmospheres generated with the fastwind code to the spectrum. We also cross-correlated each individual spectrum to the best-fit model to derive radial velocities. From its spectral features, we…
We report the first broad-band (0.5-150 keV) simultaneous X-ray observations of the very faint X-ray transient IGRJ17285-2922/XTEJ1728-295 performed with XMM-Newton and INTEGRAL satellites during its last outburst, started on 2010, August 28. XMM-Newton observed the source on 2010 September 9-10, for 22ks. INTEGRAL observations were part of the publicly available Galactic Bulge program, and overlapped with the times covered by XMM-Newton. The broad-band spectroscopy resulted in a best-fit with an absorbed power law displaying a photon index of 1.61+/-0.01, an absorbing column density of (5.10+…
We report here on the longest deep X-ray observation of a SFXT outside outburst, with an average luminosity level of 1E33 erg/s (assuming 3 kpc distance). This observation was performed with Suzaku in December 2009 and was targeted on IGRJ08408-4503, with a net exposure with the X-ray imaging spectrometer (XIS, 0.4-10 keV) and the hard X-ray detector (HXD, 15-100 keV) of 67.4 ks and 64.7 ks, respectively, spanning about three days. The source was caught in a low intensity state characterized by an initially average X-ray luminosity level of 4E32 erg/s (0.5-10 keV) during the first 120 ks, foll…
We report on a 250 ks long X-ray observation of the supergiant fast X-ray transient (SFXT) IGR J16479-4514 performed with Suzaku in 2012 February. About 80% of the short orbital period (Porb=3.32 days) was covered as continuously as possible for the first time. The source light curve displays variability of more than two orders of magnitude, starting with a very low emission state lasting the first 46 ks (1E-13 erg/cm2/s, 1-10 keV), consistent with being due to the X-ray eclipse by the supergiant companion. The transition to the uneclipsed X-ray emission is energy dependent. Outside the eclips…
Since its launch, the X-ray and gamma-ray observatory INTEGRAL satellite has revealed a new class of high-mass X-ray binaries (HMXB) displaying fast flares and hosting supergiant companion stars. Optical and infrared (OIR) observations in a multi-wavelength context are essential to understand the nature and evolution of these newly discovered celestial objects. The goal of this multiwavelength study (from ultraviolet to infrared) is to characterise the properties of IGR J16465-4507, to confirm its HMXB nature and that it hosts a supergiant star. We analysed all OIR, photometric and spectroscop…
X-ray photons coming from an X-ray point source not only arrive at the detector directly, but also can be strongly forward-scattered by the interstellar dust along the line of sight (LOS), leading to a detectable diffuse halo around the X-ray point source. The geometry of small angle X-ray scattering is straightforward, namely, the scattered photons travel longer paths and thus arrive later than the unscattered ones; thus the delay time of X-ray scattered halo photons can reveal information of the distances of the interstellar dust and the point source. Here we present a study of the X-ray sca…
A new class of faint, spectroscopically peculiar transients has emerged in the last decade. We term these events "calcium-strong transients" (CaSTs) because of their atypically high calcium-to-oxygen nebular line ratios. Previous studies have struggled to deduce the identity of their progenitors due to a combination of their extremely extended radial distributions with respect to their host galaxies and their relatively high rate of occurrence. In this work, we find that the CaST radial distribution is consistent with the radial distribution of two populations of stars: old (ages > 5 Gyr), low…
We present the first absolute calibration for the yellow post-asymptotic-giant-branch (PAGB) stars in the g- and r-band based on time-series observations from the Zwicky Transient Facility. These absolute magnitudes were calibrated using four yellow PAGB stars (one non-varying star and three Type II Cepheids) located in the globular clusters. We provide two calibrations of the gr-band absolute magnitudes for the yellow PAGB stars, by using an arithmetic mean and a linear regression. We demonstrate that the linear regression provides a better fit to the g-band absolute magnitudes for the yellow…
In this work, we aimed to derive the $gri$-band period-luminosity (PL) and period-luminosity-color (PLC) relations for late-type contact binaries, for the first time, located in the globular clusters, using the homogeneous light curves collected by the Zwicky Transient Factory (ZTF). We started with 79 contact binaries in 15 globular clusters, and retained 30 contact binaries in 10 globular clusters that have adequate number of data points in the ZTF light curves and unaffected by blending. Magnitudes at mean and maximum light of these contact binaries were determined using a fourth-order Four…
We present the first gri-band period-luminosity (PL) and period-Wesenheit (PW) relations for 37 Type II Cepheids (hereafter TIIC) located in 18 globular clusters based on photometric data from the Zwicky Transient Facility. We also updated BV IJHK-band absolute magnitudes for 58 TIIC in 24 globular clusters using the latest homogeneous distances to the globular clusters. The slopes of g/r/i and B/V/I band PL relations are found to be statistically consistent when using the same sample of distance and reddening. We employed the calibration of ri-band PL/PW relations in globular clusters to esti…
We combine infrared spectra in the I, J, H and K bands together with JHK photometry to characterize the spectral type, luminosity class and distance to the infrared counterparts to five INTEGRAL sources. For SAX J18186-1703 and IGR J18483-0311, we present the first intermediate-resolution spectroscopy reported. We find that four systems harbour early-type B supergiants. All of them are heavily obscured, with E(B-V) ranging between 3 and 5, implying visual extinctions of ~ 9 to 15 magnitudes. We refine the published classifications of IGR J18027-2016 and IGR J19140+0951 by constraining their lu…
We present the first gri-band period-luminosity (PL) and period-Wesenheit (PW) relations for the fundamental mode anomalous Cepheids. These PL and PW relations were derived from a combined sample of five anomalous Cepheids in globular cluster M92 and the Large Magellanic Cloud, both of which have distance accurate to ~1% available from literature. Our g-band PL relation is similar to the B-band PL relation as reported in previous study. We applied our PL and PW relations to anomalous Cepheids discovered in dwarf galaxy Crater II, and found a larger but consistent distance modulus than the rece…
Based on time-series observations collected from Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), we derived period-luminosity-metallicity (PLZ) and period-Wesenheit-metallicity (PWZ) relations for RR Lyrae located in globular clusters. We have applied various selection criteria to exclude RR Lyrae with problematic or spurious light curves. These selection criteria utilized information on the number of data points per light curve, amplitudes, colors, and residuals on the period-luminosity and/or period-Wesenheit relations. Due to blending, a number of RR Lyrae in globular clusters were found to be anomalously…
