0.4-10keV X-ray monitoring of Eta Car

DOI

We report high-precision X-ray monitoring observations in the 0.4-10keV band of the luminous, long-period colliding wind binary Eta Carinae, up to and through its most recent X-ray minimum/periastron passage in 2020 February. Eta Carinae reached its observed maximum X-ray flux on 2020 January 7, at a flux level of 3.30x10^-10^ergs/s/cm2, followed by a rapid plunge to its observed minimum flux, 0.03x10^-10^ergs/s/cm2, near 2020 February 17. The NICER observations show an X-ray recovery from the minimum of only ~16 days, the shortest X-ray minimum observed so far. We provide new constraints for the "deep" and "shallow" minimum intervals. Variations in the characteristic X-ray temperatures of the hottest observed X-ray emission indicate that the apex of the wind-wind "bow shock" enters the companion's wind acceleration zone about 81 days before the start of the X-ray minimum. There is a steplike increase in column density just before the X-ray minimum, probably associated with the presence of dense clumps near the shock apex. During the recovery and after, the column density shows a smooth decline, which agrees with previous NH measurements made by Swift at the same orbital phase, indicating that the changes in the mass-loss rate are only a few percent over the two cycles. Finally, we use the variations in the X-ray flux of the outer ejecta seen by NICER to derive a kinetic X-ray luminosity of the ejecta of ~10^41^ergs/s near the time of the "Great Eruption."

Identifier
DOI http://doi.org/10.26093/cds/vizier.19330136
Source https://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/lp/custom/CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/933/136
Related Identifier https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/ApJ/933/136
Related Identifier https://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJ/933/136
Metadata Access http://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/pmh/pubreg.xml?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_b2find&identifier=ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/933/136
Provenance
Creator Espinoza-Galeas D.; Corcoran M.F.; Hamaguchi K.; Russell C.M.P.,Gull T.R.; Moffat A.F.J.; Richardson N.D.; Weigelt G.; Hillier D.J.,Damineli A.; Stevens I.R.; Madura T.; Gendreau K.; Arzoumanian Z.,Navarete F.
Publisher CDS
Publication Year 2024
Rights https://cds.unistra.fr/vizier-org/licences_vizier.html
OpenAccess true
Contact CDS support team <cds-question(at)unistra.fr>
Representation
Resource Type Dataset; AstroObjects
Discipline Astrophysics and Astronomy; Cosmology; Natural Sciences; Physics; Stellar Astronomy