Astron. Astrophys. 355, 1049-1052 (2000)

A search for the IR counterpart of the black hole candidate 4U 1630-47

P.J. Callanan ¹, J.F. McCarthy ¹ and M.R. Garcia <sup>2

1</sup> Department of Physics, University College, Cork, Ireland (paulc@ucc.ie)
² Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 USA (garcia@cfa.harvard.edu)

Received 17 November 1999 / Accepted 1 December 1999

Abstract

We present the first attempt to localize the IR counterpart of the recurrent, ultra soft X-ray transient 4U 1630-47. We have obtained two sets of K band images of this highly obscured region, during both outburst and quiescence. The recent radio position reported by Hjellming et al. (1999) allow us to perform accurate astrometry on the field. We discuss three stars which lie near the radio position: although two have colours which appear to be consistent with the reddening towards 4U 1630-47, neither are strongly variable. Deeper IR monitoring, during both outburst and quiescence, is required to reliably identify an IR counterpart.

Key words: stars: binaries: close stars: individual: 4U 1630-47 infrared: stars X-rays: stars

Send offprint requests to: Paul Callanan

SIMBAD Objects

Contents

• 1. Introduction
• 2. Observations and analysis
• 3. Results
  • 3.1. Variability
  • 3.2. Colours
• 4. Discussion
  • 4.1. Could 4U 1630-47 be a Low Mass X-ray Binary?
    • 4.1.1. 4U 1630-47 as a short period X-ray transient
    • 4.1.2. 4U 1630-47 as a long period X-ray transient
  • 4.2. 4U 1630-47 as a High Mass X-ray Binary
• 5. Conclusions
• Acknowledgements
• References

© European Southern Observatory (ESO) 2000

Online publication: March 21, 2000
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