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

[Jean-Pierre Godet]

   Hi Aaron !

   About the Soft Gamma Repeater SGR 0501+4516, I checked data from Aug 
22nd to 24th and only the fourth burst gave a faint but obvious 
disturbance on two of the three frequencies monitored.

1) Aug 22nd at 12:41:59 UT : nothing.
2) Aug 22nd at 13:12:52 UT : nothing.
3) Aug 22nd at 17:29:30 UT : nothing.
4) Aug 23rd at 11:27:35 UT : small burst visible on the curves during the 
minute begining after 11:27:33 on 19.58 kHz and 22.1 kHz (Anthorn and 
Skelton, Cumbria), nothing on 21.75 kHz (Rosnay, France), and Tavolara 
Island on 20.27 kHz was out of order.
5) Aug 24th at 01:17:57 UT : nothing.

   The data is available on a space offered by my colleague and friend 
Jean-Pierre Mere on his site at :
http://jpmere.online.fr/incoming/f5yg/

   At the time, only two gamma burst was possibly detected here by the mean 
of VLF monitoring, SGR 1806-20 on September 7th 2007, and GRB080210 on 
February 10th 2008. This last one should be the third, if somebody could 
confirm (to compare with about one hundred SID in more than three years).

   J-P (AAVSO)

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On Wed, 27 Aug 2008, Aaron Price wrote:

>
>
> 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>
>> .
>>
>>
>>
>> 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>