ESA | Space Science | Science & Technology | XMM-Newton | 2018 Aug 10
EXTraS Discovery of a Peculiar Flaring X-ray Source in the Galactic Globular Cluster NGC 6540 - Sandro Mereghetti et al
An enigmatic X-ray source revealed as part of a data-mining project for high-school students shows unexplored avenues hidden in the vast archive of ESA's XMM-Newton X-ray Observatory.
When XMM-Newton was launched in 1999, most students who are finishing high school today were not even born. Yet ESA's almost two-decade old X-ray observatory has many surprises to be explored by the next generation of scientists.
A taste of new discoveries was unveiled in a recent collaboration between scientists at the National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF) in Milan, Italy, and a group of twelfth-grade students from a secondary school in nearby Saronno. ...
The six students analysed about 200 X-ray sources, looking at their light curve – a graph showing the object's variability over time – and checking the scientific literature to verify whether they had been studied already.
Eventually, they identified a handful of sources exhibiting interesting properties – a powerful flare, for example – that had not been previously reported by other studies. ...
Featuring the shortest flare of all analysed objects, this source appears to be located in the globular cluster NGC 6540 – a dense grouping of stars – and had not been studied before. ...
An otherwise low-luminosity source of X-rays, XMM-Newton saw it brighten by up to 50 times its normal level in 2005, and quickly fall again after about five minutes. ...
- Astronomy & Astrophysics 616:A36 (Aug 2018) DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201833086
arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1805.08057 > 21 May 2018