GCN Circular 9502
Subject
RXTE Discovery of Pulsations from SGR 0418+5729
Date
2009-06-10T15:43:29Z (15 years ago)
From
Ersin Gogus at Sabanci U/Turkey <ersing@sabanciuniv.edu>
Ersin Gogus (Sabanci Univ.), Chryssa Kouveliotou (NASA/NSSTC), Peter M.
Woods (Dynetics)
report on behalf of a larger collaboration:
Following the Fermi GBM/Konus/Swift detection of bursts from the new
Soft Gamma
Repeater SGR 0418+5729 (van der Horst et al. 2009, GCN #9499) we
triggered our
SGR ToO Program with RXTE. A 6.8 ks RXTE observation started on 2009
June 10,
03:42:56 UT. We detect a strong, coherent pulsations from the new SGR
(2-10 keV)
in the PCA GoodXenon mode data at 0.110152(2) Hz, corresponding to a
spin period
of 9.0783(1) sec. The pulse morphology is complex showing two asymmetric
maxima
per cycle. We note that there is no previously known X-ray source in
the RXTE field
of view with such periodicity. The detected coherent pulsations likely
indicate the spin
period of the newly discovered, burst-active SGR.
We thank the project scientist Jean Swank, and the RXTE planner, Divya
Pereira for
the prompt scheduling of the RXTE observations.