X-ray hiccups from Sgr A* observed on April 4, 2007

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics

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Scientific paper

Our Galaxy hosts at its dynamical center Sgr A*, the closest supermassive black hole. Remarkably, its luminosity is several orders of magnitude lower than the Eddington luminosity. Thanks to Chandra and XMM-Newton, we are able to detect X-ray flares from Sgr A*, providing new exciting perspectives for the understanding of the processes at work in the Galactic nucleus. On April 4, 2007, we observed for the first time within a time interval of roughly half a day, an enhanced incidence rate of X-ray flaring, with a bright flare (peak amplitude of ˜100 above the quiescent luminosity) followed by three flares of more moderate amplitude (amplitudes ˜25-40). This is the first time that a such level of X-ray flaring activity from Sgr A*, both in amplitude and frequency, is reported. This bright flare represents the second brightest X-ray flare from Sgr A* on record. This new bright flare exhibits similar light-curve shape (nearly symmetrical), duration (˜3 ks) and spectral characteristics to the very bright flare observed in October 3, 2002 by XMM-Newton. Based on a fully self-consistent analysis approach, we established that the two brightest X-ray flares observed so far from Sgr A* exhibited similar (well constrained) soft spectra.

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