Bibcode
Muñoz-Darias, T.; Casares, J.; O'Brien, K.; Steeghs, D.; Martínez-Pais, I. G.; Cornelisse, R.; Charles, P. A.
Bibliographical reference
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters, Volume 394, Issue 1, pp. L136-L140.
Advertised on:
3
2009
Citations
29
Refereed citations
28
Description
We present Very Large Telescope (VLT) intermediate resolution
spectroscopy of UY Vol, the optical counterpart of the low mass X-ray
binary (LMXB) X-ray burster EXO 0748-676. By using Doppler tomography we
detect narrow components within the broad HeII λ4542,
λ4686 and λ5412 emission lines. The phase, velocity and
narrowness of these lines are consistent with their arising from the
irradiated hemisphere of the donor star, as has been observed in a
number of LMXBs. Under this assumption, we provide the first dynamical
constraints on the stellar masses in this system. In particular, we
measure K2 > Kem = 300 +/- 10 kms-1.
Using this value, we derive 1Msolar <= M1 <=
2.4Msolar and 0.11 <= q <= 0.28. We find M1
>= 1.5Msolar for the case of a main sequence companion
star. Our results are consistent with the presence of a massive neutron
star as has been suggested by Özel (2006), although we cannot
discard the canonical value of ~1.4Msolar.
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