Pulsars, transients and relativistic astrophysics

Abstract:

Chandra observations of 3C432, 3C191 and B2 0902+34 are presented as part of an ongoing search for inverse-Compton scattering of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) from high redshift radio sources (Schwartz, 2000). The energy density of the CMB increases with redshift, z, as (1 + Z)(4), so the relatively high redshift of these powerful radio galaxies makes them good candidates for detecting extended inverse-Compton scattering along the radio jet axis: we do indeed detect radio-aligned X-ray emission.

Abstract:

We present near-infrared imaging of a sample of the faint, hard X-ray sources discovered in the 2001 Chandra Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS)-I survey towards the Galactic Centre (GC) by Wang et al. These ∼800 discrete sources represent an important and previously undetected population within the Galaxy. From our Very Large Telescope observations of 77 X-ray sources, we identify candidate K-band counterparts to 75 per cent of the Chandra sources in our sample. The near-infrared magnitudes and colours of the majority of candidate counterparts are consistent with highly reddened stars, indicating that most of the Chandra sources are likely to be accreting binaries at or near the GC. © 2005 RAS.