AAS Meeting #193 - Austin, Texas, January 1999
Session 43. RXTE, XTE and X-Ray Sources
Display, Thursday, January 7, 1999, 9:20am-6:30pm, Exhibits Hall 1

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[43.07] Variability in the Bright Bulge Source GX13+1

A.P. Smale, R.H.D. Corbet (USRA, NASA/GSFC), A. G. Peele (NRC, NASA/GSFC), S. Wachter (CTIO)

Despite being one of the seven brightest persistent X-ray sources in the Galactic bulge, little is definitively known about GX13+1. Although classified as an atoll source, GX13+1 shows many characteristics common to Z-sources (excursions in HID/CD, radio emission, a candidate orbital periodicity implying a giant donor star, etc). In addition, a candidate superorbital periodicity of 50 dy has been observed in RXTE ASM data. We have therefore undertaken extensive RXTE observations of this enigmatic source totalling 340 ksec, including a monitoring program between 1998 May-Oct, and an intensive observing block simultaneous with a week-long study of the IR counterpart at CTIO in 1998 June. Here we will present the first results of this investigation, to include: (a) a discussion of the secular changes seen in the color-color diagram of GX13+1 throughout the observing interval; (b) X-ray timing studies, from searches for kHz- and Hz-range QPO to possible orbital (hr-day) and superorbital (wk/mo) variability; (c) X-ray spectral studies; (d) a comparison of the X-ray and IR data.


The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: alan@osiris.gsfc.nasa.gov

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