The Near-Infrared Counterpart to the Anomalous X-Ray Pulsar 1E 1048.1-5937

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  • 25 July 2002
Abstract
We report our discovery of the likely near-infrared counterpart to the anomalous X-ray pulsar (AXP) 1E 1048.1-5937, using observations from the 6.5-m Baade (Magellan I) telescope in Chile. We derived a precise position for the X-ray source using archival data from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. Since this position is inconsistent with a position reported earlier from XMM-Newton, we conservatively considered eight optical and near-IR sources within both error circles as candidate counterparts, although we also show that the XMM-Newton observation likely suffered from attitude reconstruction problems. Two of the IR objects have unusual colors, and one of these has colors consistent with those of the identified counterparts of two other AXPs. The latter object is the only source detected within the error circle, and we identify it as the counterpart to 1E 1048.1-5937. This is the first AXP counterpart detected in multiple IR bands, with magnitudes J=21.7(3), H=20.8(3), and K=19.4(3). There is marginal evidence for spectral flattening at longer wavelengths.

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