X-ray Data Analysis to Search for Magnetar Candidates in the Galactic Plane

We report on our Galactic plane searches for magnetars in the archival Chandra X-ray Observatory (CXO) data. We summarize the properties of known magnetars and use them to establish a procedure for magnetar searches. The procedure includes four steps: source finding, spectral characterization, optic...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Woochan Park, Hongjun An
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Korean Space Science Society (KSSS) 2018-09-01
Series:Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
Subjects:
Online Access:http://janss.kr/journal/article.php?code=62900
Description
Summary:We report on our Galactic plane searches for magnetars in the archival Chandra X-ray Observatory (CXO) data. We summarize the properties of known magnetars and use them to establish a procedure for magnetar searches. The procedure includes four steps: source finding, spectral characterization, optical counterpart checks, and period searches. We searched 1,282 archival CXO observations, found 32,838 X-ray sources, and selected 25 intriguing candidates using the developed procedure. Although we do not firmly identify a magnetar among them, we significantly reduced the number of targets in future magnetar searches to be done with better X-ray telescopes.
ISSN:2093-5587
2093-1409