AAS 207th Meeting, 8-12 January 2006
Session 198 Neutron Stars and Pulsars
Oral, Thursday, 10:00-11:30am, January 12, 2006, Balcony B

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[198.02] Candidate Isolated Neutron Stars and Other Stellar X-ray Sources from ROSAT and SDSS

M. A. Agüeros (University of Washington)

I present results from a campaign to identify and characterize stellar counterparts to X-ray sources detected by the ROSAT All Sky Survey (RASS) and falling within the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) footprint. Of order one third of the counterparts to X-ray sources in the RASS are likely to be stars. However, many of these stellar X-ray sources are not suitable for optical identification based on routine SDSS multi-fiber spectroscopy: the bulk of the stellar counterparts are either too bright (m < 15; e.g., bright stars with coronal X-ray emission), or in some rare but interesting cases, too faint, to obtain routine SDSS spectroscopy. Instead, I use SDSS imaging photometry, correlations with 2MASS and other catalogs, and spectroscopy from the Apache Point Observatory 3.5m telescope, to identify such stellar X-ray counterparts in the RASS/SDSS overlap region. Among the most interesting stellar subclasses considered are rare candidate isolated neutron stars that may be emitting thermally in X-rays.

The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the NASA Harriett G. Jenkins Predoctoral Fellowship Program.


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