Repeated X-ray Flaring Activity in Sagittarius A*

G. Bélanger(1,2), A. Goldwurm,(1,2), F. Melia(3), P. Ferrando,(1,2), N. Grosso(4), D. Porquet(5), R. Warwick(6), F. Yusef-Zadeh(7)


(1) Service d'Astrophysique, DAPNIA/DSM/CEA, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France
(2) Unité mixte de recherche Astroparticule et Cosmologie, 11 place Berthelot, 75005 Paris, France
(3) Department of Physics and Steward Observatory, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA
(4) Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Grenoble, Université Joseph-Fourier, 38041 Grenoble, France
(5) Max-Planck-Institute für extraterrestrische Physik, Munich D-85741, Germany
(6) Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 7RH, UK
(7) Department of Physics and Astronomy, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208

Paper: ApJ, accepted

EPrint Server: astro-ph/0508412


Abstract:

Investigating the spectral and temporal characteristics of the X-rays coming from Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) is essential to our development of a more complete understanding of the emission mechanisms in this supermassive black hole located at the center of our Galaxy. Several X-ray flares with varying durations and spectral features have already been observed from this object. Here we present the results of two long XMM observations of the Galactic nucleus carried out in 2004, for a total exposure time of nearly 500 ks. During these observations we detected two flares from Sgr A* with peak 2-10 keV luminosities about 40 times (L_X 9 * 1034 erg/s) above the quiescent luminosity: one on 2004 March 31 and another on 2004 August 31. The first flare lasted about 2.5 ks and the second about 5 ks. The combined fit on the Epic spectra yield photon indeces of about 1.5 and 1.9 for the first and second flare respectively. This hard photon index strongly suggests the presence of an important population of non-thermal electrons during the event and supports the view that the majority of flaring events tend to be hard and not very luminous.


Preprints available from the authors at belanger@cea.fr , or the raw TeX (no figures) if you click here.

Back to the gcnews home-page.