Utilizing data from ESA’s XMM-Newton satellite and NASA’s NuSTAR space observatory, Indian astronomers have conducted a broadband X-ray inspection of an unusual intermediate polar called the Paloma.
Cataclysmic variables (CVs) are binary star networks consisting of a small white accreting material from an average star. They irregularly increase brightness by a huge factor, then go down to a quiescent state. Polaris is a subclass of cataclysmic variables differentiated from other CVs by the existence of a very powerful magnetic field in their white dwarf stars.
Paloma is an unusual intermediate polar in which this WD asynchronism is extensively less than other IPs. Thus, to attain more insights into this anomaly and to disclose the general properties of Palomar, Anirban Dutta and Vikram Rana of Raman Research Institute in Bangalore, India, examined this source.
“Using the broadband X-ray data, simultaneously obtained from XMM-Newton and NuSTAR, we tried to give an overall description of the spectral properties of the system, along with the temporal behavior of the system extending all the way up to 40 keV,” the researchers jotted down in the paper
The observations established that orbit-folded light curves display a single broad hump-like structure with healthy dips for soft to medium X-rays. The astronomers speculate that this is because of the emission detected from at least one pole at any point of time during the orbital motion of the white dwarf in Paloma. It was added that “these dips arise due to the presence of a complex inhomogeneous absorber.”
