AAS 203rd Meeting, January 2004
Session 58 Eta Carinae
Poster, Tuesday, January 6, 2004, 9:20am-6:30pm, Hanover Hall

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[58.02] High Resolution Temporal and Spectral Monitoring of Eta Carinae's X-ray Emission Through the June Eclipse

M. F. Corcoran (USRA & NASA-GSFC/LHEA), K. Hamaguchi (NRC & NASA-GSFC/LHEA), D. Henley (University of Birmingham), J. M. Pittard (The University of Leeds), T. R. Gull (NASA-GSFC/LASP), K. Davidson (University of Minnesota), J. H. Swank, R. Petre (NASA-GSFC/LHEA), K. Ishibashi (MIT), Eta Car HST Treasury Team

The supermassive and luminous star Eta Carinae undergoes strong X-ray variations every 5.5 years when its 2-10 keV X-ray emission brightens rapidly with wild fluctuations before dropping by a factor of 100 to a minimum lasting 3 months. The most recent X-ray ``eclipse" began in June 2003 and during this time Eta Carinae was intensely observed throughout the electromagnetic spectrum. Here we report the first results of frequent monitoring of the 2-10 keV band X-ray emission by the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer along with high resolution X-ray spectra obtained with the transmission gratings on the Chandra X-ray Observatory. We compare these observations to those results obtained during the previous X-ray eclipse in 1998, and interpret the variations in the X-ray brightness, in the amount of absorption, in the X-ray emission measure and in the K-shell emission lines in terms of a colliding wind binary model.


If you would like more information about this abstract, please follow the link to http://lheawww.gsfc.nasa.gov/users/corcoran/eta_car/2003.5+. This link was provided by the author. When you follow it, you will leave the Web site for this meeting; to return, you should use the Back comand on your browser.

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

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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 35#5
© 2003. The American Astronomical Soceity.