Back

GCN Circular 21190

Subject

Trigger 755848: Swift spurious trigger on Cen X-3

Date

2017-06-04T13:42:37Z (8 years ago)

From

Scott Barthelmy at NASA/GSFC <scott@milkyway.gsfc.nasa.gov>

S. D. Barthelmy (GSFC), D. N. Burrows (PSU), A. Y. Lien (GSFC/UMBC),
K. L. Page (U Leicester) and D. M. Palmer (LANL) report on behalf of
the Swift Team:

At 13:11:48 UT, the Swift Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) triggered and
located Cen X-3 (trigger=755848).  Swift slewed immediately to the source. 
The BAT on-board calculated location is 
RA, Dec 170.336, -60.629, which is 
   RA(J2000)  =  11h 21m 21s
   Dec(J2000) = -60d 37' 44"
with an uncertainty of 3 arcmin (radius, 90% containment, including 
systematic uncertainty).  As is typical for image triggers, there is nothing
significant in the real-time light curve. 

At 13:11:48 UT, due to a known race condition in the 
Swift/BAT software, BAT  misidentified Cen X-3 as 
a different source (Trigger 755848), and slewed
to Cen X-3 for follow-up observations. 
Cen X-3 was at its typical flux level. 

This is not an interesting astrophysical event.