Search

The radiative counterpart of the supermassive black hole at the Galactic Centre, Sagittarius A*, displays flaring emission in the X-ray band atop a steady, quiescent level. Flares are also observed in the near-infrared band. The physical process producing the flares is not fully understood and it is unclear if the flaring rate varies, although some recent works suggest it has reached unprecedented variability in recent years. Using over a decade of regular X-ray monitoring of Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, we studied the variations in count rate of Sgr A* on time scales of years. We decomposed the X-ray emission into quiescent and flaring emission, modelled as a constant and power law process, respectively. We found that the complete, multi-year dataset cannot be described by a stationary distribution of flare fluxes, while individual years follow this model better. In three of the ten studied years, the data is consistent with a purely Poissonian quiescent distribution, while for five years only an upper limit of the flare flux distribution parameter could be determined. We find that these possible changes cannot be explained fully by the different number of observations per year. Combined, these results are instead consistent with a changing flaring rate of Sgr A*, appearing more active between 2006-2007 and 2017-2019, than between 2008-2012. Finally, we discuss this result in the context of flare models and the passing of gaseous objects, and discuss the extra statistical steps taken, for instance to deal with the background in the Swift observations., 14 pages, 10 figures, Accepted for publication in MNRAS

Results of a search for X-ray counterparts of radio pulsars with the EPIC-PN instrument on board XMM-Newton are presented. Despite the mostly relatively short exposure times (

Starting in 2006, Swift has been targeting a region of ~21'X21' around Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) with the onboard X-ray telescope. The short, quasi-daily observations offer an unique view of the long-term X-ray behavior of the supermassive black hole. We report on the data obtained between 2006 February and 2011 October, which encompasses 715 observations with a total accumulated exposure time of ~0.8 Ms. A total of six X-ray flares were detected with Swift, which all had an average 2-10 keV luminosity of Lx (1-4)E35 erg/s (assuming a distance of 8 kpc). This more than doubles the number of such bright X-ray flares observed from Sgr A*. One of the Swift-detected flares may have been softer than the other five, which would indicate that flares of similar intensity can have different spectral properties. The Swift campaign allows us to constrain the occurrence rate of bright (Lx > 1E35 erg/s) X-ray flares to be ~0.1-0.2 per day, which is in line with previous estimates. This analysis of the occurrence rate and properties of the X-ray flares seen with Swift offers an important calibration point to asses whether the flaring behavior of Sgr A* changes as a result of its interaction with the gas cloud that is projected to make a close passage in 2013., 8 pages, 5 figures, 3 tables. Shortened, accepted to ApJ

Long-duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are thought to result from the explosions of certain massive stars, and some are bright enough that they should be observable out to redshifts of z > 20 using current technology. Hitherto, the highest redshift measured for any object was z = 6.96, for a Lyman-alpha emitting galaxy. Here we report that GRB 090423 lies at a redshift of z approximately 8.2, implying that massive stars were being produced and dying as GRBs approximately 630 Myr after the Big Bang. The burst also pinpoints the location of its host galaxy.