GCN Circular 41763
Subject
EP250908c: refined analysis of the EP-WXT and EP-FXT observations
Event
Date
2025-09-09T10:00:52Z (6 days ago)
From
EP Team at NAOC/CAS <ep_ta@bao.ac.cn>
Via
Web form
M. H. Zhang, X. X. Sun, M. J. Liu, H. Y. Ren, T. Y. Liu (NAO, CAS), Y.-H. I. Yin (NJU), H. Sun (NAO, CAS) report on behalf of the Einstein Probe team:
The X-ray transient EP250908c was detected by the Wide-field X-ray Telescope (WXT) on board the Einstein Probe (EP) mission (Zhang et al., GCN 41754). Refined analysis of the WXT data shows that the event started at T0=2025-09-08 23:49:53 (UTC) and lasted for about 62 s before the interruption of the autonomous follow-up. The average WXT 0.5-4 keV spectrum can be fitted with an absorbed power law with a Galactic hydrogen column density of 1.6 x 10^20 cm^-2 and a photon index of 0.3 (-0.6/+0.6). The derived average unabsorbed 0.5-4 keV flux is 6.2 (-1.4/+2.2) x 10^(-10) erg/s/cm^2.
The Follow-up X-ray Telescope (FXT) on board EP observed this source autonomously about 277 s after T0. On-ground analysis of the FXT data found an uncatalogued source at R.A. = 8.2167, DEC = -50.4612 (J2000) with an uncertainty of about 10 arcsec (radius, 90% C.L. statistical and systematic), which is consistent positionally with the WXT transient. The average 0.5-10 keV spectrum can be fitted with an absorbed power law with a Galactic hydrogen column density of 1.6 x 10^20 cm^-2 and a photon index of 1.59 (-0.07/+0.07). The absorption from the host galaxy cannot be constrained. The derived average unabsorbed 0.5-10 keV flux is 8.16 (-0.17/+0.21) x 10^(-12) erg/s/cm^2. The uncertainties are at the 90% confidence level for the above parameters.
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).