Near-infrared identification of the counterpart to X1908+075: a new OB-supergiant X-ray binary

Morel, T.; Grosdidier, Y.
Bibliographical reference

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 356, Issue 2, pp. 665-670.

Advertised on:
1
2005
Number of authors
2
IAC number of authors
1
Citations
22
Refereed citations
19
Description
We report the near-infrared (near-IR) identification of the likely counterpart to X1908+075, a highly absorbed Galactic X-ray source recently suspected to belong to the rare class of OB supergiant-neutron star binary systems. Our JHKs-band imaging of the field reveals the existence within the X-ray error boxes of a near-IR source consistent with an early-type star lying at d~ 7 kpc and suffering AV~ 16 mag of extinction, the latter value being in good agreement with the hydrogen column density derived from modelling of the X-ray spectrum. Our follow-up, near-IR spectroscopic observations confirm the nature of this candidate and lead to a late O-type supergiant classification, thereby supporting the identification of a new Galactic OB-supergiant X-ray binary.
Type