Serendipitous X-ray Sources in the Chandra HRC Field around Alpha Centauri

TL;DR

This study analyzes a decade of Chandra X-ray observations around Alpha Centauri, revealing diverse, often transient X-ray sources mostly associated with nearby stars, highlighting the dynamic nature of the high-energy stellar environment.

Contribution

It provides the first long-term, detailed characterization of serendipitous X-ray sources in the Alpha Centauri field, emphasizing their variability and transient behavior.

Findings

Most X-ray sources are variable or transient.

Two sources have conflicting optical and X-ray counterparts.

One source exhibited a super-flare, brightening 100-fold in X-rays.

Abstract

For more than a decade, Alpha Centauri AB (G2V+K1V) has been observed by Chandra, in a long-term program to follow coronal (T~1MK) activity cycles of the two sunlike stars. Over 2008.4-2017.8, nineteen HRC-I exposures were taken, each about 10 ks in duration, and spaced about six months apart. Beyond monitoring the AB X-ray luminosities, the HRC-I sequence represents a unique decadal record of the dozen, or so, serendipitous X-ray sources in the Alpha Cen field, which is at low Galactic latitude and thus dominated by nearby stars. For the present study, the ten brightest candidates were considered. Only a handful of these were persistent; most were variable, some highly so, flaring in a few epochs, weak or absent in the others. All ten X-ray sources have Gaia objects within about 2 arcseconds; mostly late-type dwarfs, but a few giants. However, two of the proposed optical counterparts have statistically significant offsets, and possible conflicts between the X-ray and optical properties. Another of the candidates brightened a factor of 100 in X-rays during a single exposure, briefly attaining super-flare status. The Gaia counterpart is anomalously blue for its absolute G-magnitude, and likely is a WD+dM pair. To the extent that the low Galactic latitude field is representative, the Chandra time-domain view emphasizes that the high-energy stellar sky is biased toward transient sources, so any snapshot survey surely will miss many of the most interesting objects.