The crucial discovery of thermonuclear X-ray bursts: never throw away old data!

Erik Kuulkers

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arXiv · 2411.03911

The crucial discovery of thermonuclear X-ray bursts: never throw away old data!

Erik Kuulkers

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Abstract

The detection of Type I X-ray bursts is attributed to those seen by the Astronomical Netherlands Satellite (ANS) in September 1975 from the globular cluster NGC6624 containing the X-ray source 4U1820-303. I revisit these X-ray bursts, by re-analysing data from the Soft X-ray Experiment (SXX) onboard ANS, which were stored on microfiche. Earlier accounts of X-ray bursts had been reported; the first Type I X-ray burst recorded is the one observed by Vela 5B from Cen X-4 in July 1969.

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Erik Kuulkers. 2024-11-06. The crucial discovery of thermonuclear X-ray bursts: never throw away old data!. https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.03911

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