Wet and windy friday, and we ask the Mighty One a sexy topical question: is XTE J1739-285 really spinning at 1122 Hz?
Whoosh goes the randomizer.
Whoosh.
- The Covering: Long Time Gone - Dixie Chick
- The Crossing: We Do What We Can - Sheryl Crowe
- The Crown: Catch - The Cure
- The Root: Litirnir - Edda Backman
- The Past: Knights of the Round Table - Monty Python
- The Future: Everyday I Write the Book - Elvis Costello
- The Questioner: Add It Up - Violent Femmes
- The House: Stína Og Brúðan Hennar - Helga Möller
- The Inside: Ghost Town - Specials
- The Outcome: Highway Patrolman - Dar Williams
So that's a "No".
The Root is "the colours" - clearly referring to the tricky business of frequency analysis what frequency range the power is concentrated;
The House is a traditional song about a girl buying cloth for her doll to make a dress, and the shopkeeper offers a price of a kiss. The song ends triumphantly as the girl explains that her mother will be along in a minute to pay.
As always, the Key as explained by Sean
But the Future tells us, it ain't over, there will be more pulsars timed...
Don't tell me you don't know what love is
When you're old enough to know better
When you find strange hands in your sweater
When your dreamboat turns out to be a footnote
I'm a man with a mission in two or three editions
And I'm giving you a longing look
Everyday, everyday, everyday I write the book
Chapter One we didn't really get along
Chapter Two I think I fell in love with you
You said you'd stand by me in the middle of Chapter Three
But you were up to your old tricks in
Chapters Four, Five and Six
And I'm giving you a longing look
Everyday, everyday, everyday I write the book
The way you walk
The way you talk, and try to kiss me, and laugh
In four or five paragraphs
All your compliments and your cutting remarks
Are captured here in my quotation marks
And I'm giving you a longing look
Everyday, everyday, everyday I write the book
Don't tell me you don't know the difference
Between a lover and a fighter
With my pen and my electric typewriter
Even in a perfect world where everyone was equal
I'd still own the film rights and be working on the sequel
And I'm giving you a longing look
Everyday, everyday, everyday I write the book
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Local x-ray pulsar experts here have argued to a similar conclusion, mostly based on the fact that their statistical analysis has some serious flaws. Glad that the iPod iChing agrees ;)
Mighty is the iPod.
And knowledgable of statistics also.
Can I convince you to explain in a little more detail the quote, "clearly referring to the tricky business of frequency analysis what frequency range the power is concentrated."?
Their quoted error bars (0.3 Hz) are quite small...does that mean that there is a systematic uncertainty that is missing or something else?
Well, blind searches for weak periodic signal in intermittent data is a hazardous business.
The formal statistical significance of the frequency peak at 1122 Hz is only just over 4 sigma which immediately worries those of us old enough to remember previous claims of very high frequency detections.
Anecdotally, the "pulsar experts" alluded to above have concluded that the number of independent trials in sampling the power spectrum has been undercounted, so the actual peak is not statistically significant.
Never trust a detection less than 5 sigma, unless it confirms one of my theories of course...
Annoyingly, RXTE could test this claim by more observations, if the power is real then the S/N will accumulate strongly and be highly signficant with further observations.
But RXTE is being shut down soon, no idea if they can get a discretionary time allocation to test this, or if it is urgent enough to be worthy of DD time.
No other satellite has the timing capability and sensitivity, and none are in the pipeline that I am aware of.
This LMXB has outbursts roughly every 2 years, last one in August 2005. RXTE is scheduled to continue observations until early 2009, so it seems very likely that RXTE will catch the next outburst of this object (unless the darn thing decides to go off at Christmas 2007...).
More good news. India will be launching ASTROSAT (http://www.rri.res.in/astrosat) in mid-2007. ASTROSAT will have large-area xenon-filled proportional counters, which are expected to provide similar effective area as BeppoSAX (equivalent to 3 PCUs on RXTE, half the total but equal to what RXTE has typically been using for several years now). So this question will be decided within a few years, by one instrument or the other.
Oh, and I would bet two weeks' wages that this LMXB will be observed immediately and extensively during its next outburst. Jean Swank and the other RXTE staff have considerable authority to point at any new outbursts they find interesting, and there will certainly be a TOO proposal to look at XTE J1739-285's outburst (that will be very highly rated!). :-)
That is what we like to hear.
It would be very cool if it is real, give lots of theorists serious headaches.
That of course is worth a lot of discretionary observation time