GCN Circular 40790

H. Sun (NAO, CAS), J. Yang (NJU), H. Z. Wu (HUST), X. L. Chen (YNU), W. D. Zhang (NAO, CAS) on behalf of the Einstein Probe (EP) team:

We report on the detection of a new X-ray outburst from the black hole low-mass X-ray
binary GRS 1739-278, by the Wide-field X-ray Telescope (WXT) on board the Einstein Probe (EP) mission. The source exhibited a rapid rise in its 0.5-4 keV flux since June 15th, 2025 and triggered EP-WXT (ID: 01709179036) at 2025-06-19T14:54:11 (UTC, ATel #17238).

A follow-up observation with the Follow-up X-ray Telescope (FXT) on board EP was performed automatically around 2 minutes after the trigger, with an exposure time of 1.2 ks. A bright X-ray source, whose position is consistent with GRS 1739-278, was detected by FXT, thus confirming the new outburst of GRS 1739-278. The FXT spectrum can be fitted by an absorbed power-law with a photon index of 2.1 (+/-0.1) and a neutral hydrogen column density of 2.3 (+/-0.1) x 10^22 cm^-2. The derived unabsorbed flux in 0.5-10 keV is 1.8 (+/-0.1) x 10^-9 erg/s/cm^2. 

Multi-wavelength follow-up observations are strongly encouraged.

Launched on January 9, 2024, EP is a space X-ray observatory to monitor the soft X-ray sky with X-ray follow-up capability (Yuan et al. 2022, Handbook of X-ray and Gamma-ray Astrophysics).