| Proposal Number | Subject Category | PI Name | Chandra Time | Title |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 09400002 | BH AND NS BINARIES | Joern Wilms | Joint XMM-Newton, Chandra, and RXTE Observations of Dips in Cyg X-1 | |
| 09400003 | BH AND NS BINARIES | Rudy Wijnands | Monitoring Observations of the Galactic Center Region | |
| 09300001 | WD BINARIES AND CV | Wolfgang Pietsch | Resolving short supersoft source states of optical novae in the core of M31 |
Subject Category:BH AND NS BINARIES
Proposal Number: 09400002
Title:Joint XMM-Newton, Chandra, and RXTE Observations of Dips in Cyg X-1
PI Name: Joern Wilms
At orbital phase zero (i.e., the O star secondary intervening our line of sight to the black hole primary), Cyg X-1 shows X-ray dips due to highly variable absorption in matter in the accretion stream. Studying the physics of these dips requires joint XMM/Chandra-HETGS/RXTE observations: XMM-Newton provides the crucially important spectral continuum through the broad Fe line region at CCD resolution and it achieves high signal-to-noise in the <2keV band, allowing the dipping events to be temporally resolved and spectrally modeled on short time scales. The simultaneous Chandra data provide high resolution spectroscopy of the dipping events (albeit at a lower time resolution compared to XMM-Newton), while RXTE provides the hard X-ray continuum out to >150keV.
Subject Category:BH AND NS BINARIES
Proposal Number: 09400003
Title:Monitoring Observations of the Galactic Center Region
PI Name: Rudy Wijnands
Monitoring Observations of the Galactic Center Region We propose to continue our monitoring campaign using XMM-Newton and Chandra of the inner 1.2 square degree region centered on the Galactic Center. We will be able to detect transients in this region with a peak luminosity of 1E33-1E35 ergs/s, 10 to 1000 times more sensitive than what is possible with other satellites (i.e., RXTE and INTEGRAL). This allows us to observe a very poorly studied group of transients and to follow the luminosity behavior of faint (~1E36 ergs/s) persistent sources.
Subject Category: WD BINARIES AND CV
Proposal Number:09300001
Title:Resolving short supersoft source states of optical novae in the core of M31
PI Name: Wolfgang Pietsch
We propose to monitor the M31 core with five 23ks XMM-Newton EPIC and five 20ks Chandra HRC-I observations equally distributed from Nov 2007 to mid Feb 2008 to determine the light curves for short supersoft source (SSS) states of optical novae. SSS states with <100 d duration indicate accreting massive white dwarfs. They are proposed as SN Ia progenitors and determining their frequency is very important. We will correlate detected sources with novae from optical monitoring of the same area. With a nova rate in the field of ~25/yr and SSS states lasting from weeks to years we will follow light curves of many novae. Durations of the nova SSS state will allow us to constrain envelope and whitedwarf masses. We will also monitor time variability of ~200 M31 centre X-ray sources (mostly XRBs).
