[Aavso-sid-list] Monitoring for SID from newly discovered SGR

[Aaron Price]

 Hey, all. This just came in from Jerry Fishman, Co-PI of the GLAST Burst Monitor instrument. 
Please check your records for any activity and please post to the group if you find anything, 
both positive and negative. I'll compile the results and send them to Dr. Fishman and Andrea 
at Stanford.

Aaron

>A new SGR and a giant pulse from it may be detectable through VLF
>monitoring.  Please make the information below available to the AAVSO
>SID group and to the VLF group at Stanford.  I would like to collaborate
>in findings,  if any, as we did on previous SGR and GRB outbursts.
>
>Thanks,
>Jerry Fishman
>NASA-MSFC
>Huntsville, ,AL
>---------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
>A new SGR (also known as a magnetar) (SGR 0501+4516)was discovered on
>Friday.  Many major observatories, world-wide have been searching for
>optical and radio emission from it.  The space-borne experiments that
>have been observing it almost continuously are: SWIFT, RXTE, and
>GLAST-GBM.
>
>Last night it produced a gigantic outburst - over 200,000cps in our
>GLAST-GBM detectors, which became fully operational only last month,
>after the launch of GLAST in June (look for the announcement of a name
>change by NASA this week).  The giant pulse last night was at
>01:17:57UT, 24 August and was only ~0.5s wide.  Other large pulses of
>similar shape, but lower intensity, are being seen ~10 times per day at
>random intervals.
>
>
>
>Reports on the frenetic activity are being reported in the GCN
>Circulars:
>http://lheawww.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/gamcosray/legr/bacodine/gcn3_archive.html
><http://lheawww.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/gamcosray/legr/bacodine/gcn3_archive.html>
>.
>
>
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>The location of this SGR near the Galactic anticenter region region, and
>only a few degrees above the Galactic plane is unique among SGRs and
>AXPs.  Maybe it won't be as obscured as the others and can be studied
>optically.
>
>
>
>A pulsar period of 5.769s has been discovered by a former student of
>Chryssa's, Ersin Gogus, see below) who has now returned to Turkey.
>This x-ray pulsar may also be observable in the VLF or other wavelength
>regions.
>
>
>
>
>
>TITLE:   GCN CIRCULAR
>NUMBER:  8118
>SUBJECT: Discovery of  the Spin Period of the New Soft Gamma Repeater
>SGR 0501+4516
>DATE:    08/08/22 21:39:33 GMT
>FROM:    Chryssa Kouveliotou at MSFC  <chryssa.kouveliotou at nasa.gov>
>
>E. Gogus (Sabanci University), P. Woods (Dynetics), and C. Kouveliotou
>(NASA/MSFC), report on behalf of a larger collaboration:
>
>We triggered our SGR ToO Program with RXTE following the Swift detection
>of a burst from the new Soft Gamma Repeater SGR 0501+4516 (Barthelmy et
>al. 2008, GCN # 8113). A 600 s RXTE observation started on 2008 August
>22, 16:39:09 UT. During this pointing we detected one short SGR
>burst-like event in the PCA data (2-60 keV), confirming that the new
>source was in the field of view. We searched for a spin period for the
>new SGR in the 2.5-13.5 keV band PCA event mode data and detected a
>coherent signal (barycenter corrected) at 0.17334 Hz, corresponding to a
>spin period of 5.769 =B1 0.004 s.
>
>A longer RXTE observation of SGR 0501+4516 is currently underway.  We
>thank the RXTE planner, Divya Pereira, for prompt scheduling.
>
>
>
>To give you some background on magnetars, see the excellent paper from
>Scientific American by my colleague here at MSFC, Chryssa Kouveliotou:
>
>http://solomon.as.utexas.edu/~duncan/sciam.pdf
><https://mail01.ndc.nasa.gov/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://solomon.as.utexas.edu/~duncan/sciam.pdf>
>.
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