Page, KL;
Beardmore, AP;
Osborne, JP;
Munari, U;
Ness, J-U;
Evans, PA;
Bode, MF;
... Woodward, CE; + view all
(2022)
The 2021 outburst of the recurrent nova RS Ophiuchi observed in X-rays by the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory: a comparative study.
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
, 514
(2)
pp. 1557-1574.
10.1093/mnras/stac1295.
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Abstract
On 2021 August 8, the recurrent nova RS Ophiuchi erupted again, after an interval of 15.5 yr. Regular monitoring by the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory began promptly, on August 9.9 (0.37 day after the optical peak), and continued until the source passed behind the Sun at the start of November, 86 days later. Observations then restarted on day 197, once RS Oph emerged from the Sun constraint. This makes RS Oph the first Galactic recurrent nova to have been monitored by Swift throughout two eruptions. Here we investigate the extensive X-ray datasets from 2006 and 2021, as well as the more limited data collected by EXOSAT in 1985. The hard X-rays arising from shock interactions between the nova ejecta and red giant wind are similar following the last two eruptions. In contrast, the early super-soft source (SSS) in 2021 was both less variable and significantly fainter than in 2006. However, 0.3–1 keV light-curves from 2021 reveal a 35 s quasi-periodic oscillation consistent in frequency with the 2006 data. The Swift X-ray spectra from 2021 are featureless, with the soft emission typically being well parametrized by a simple blackbody, while the 2006 spectra showed much stronger evidence for superimposed ionized absorption edges. Considering the data after day 60 following each eruption, during the supersoft phase the 2021 spectra are hotter, with smaller effective radii and lower wind absorption, leading to an apparently reduced bolometric luminosity. We explore possible explanations for the gross differences in observed SSS behaviour between the 2006 and 2021 outbursts.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | The 2021 outburst of the recurrent nova RS Ophiuchi observed in X-rays by the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory: a comparative study |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1093/mnras/stac1295 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stac1295 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Royal Astronomical Society. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
| Keywords: | Stars: individual: RS Oph, novae, cataclysmic variables, X-rays: stars |
| UCL classification: | UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Space and Climate Physics UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10148791 |
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