GCN Circular 45111
Subject
EP260707a is not a real source
Event
Date
2026-07-08T02:34:57Z (7 days ago)
From
EP Team at NAOC/CAS <ep_ta@bao.ac.cn>
Via
Web form
H. Zhou, Y. F. Liang (PMO), K. R. Ni (CCNU), C.-K. Kan (HKU), H. Sun (NAO, CAS) on behalf of the Einstein Probe (EP) team:
We report on the follow-up analysis of the X-ray transient candidate EP260707a, initially triggered the Wide-field X-ray Telescope (WXT) on board the Einstein Probe (EP) mission (Zhou et al. GCN 45107) also followed by optical telescopes (Liu et al. GCN 45109, Strausbaugh et al. GCN 45110)
Following the analysis of the telemetry data, we found that the EP260707a is not a real transient. The uncatalogued X-ray source subsequently detected by the Follow-up X-ray Telescope (FXT) within the WXT error circle is considered as a coincidental alignment, rather than a counterpart to a real transient.
We apologize for any inconvenience caused to the community.
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).