# Precise Interplanetary Network Localization of the Bursting Pulsar GRO J1744-28

## 1 Introduction

The Bursting Pulsar GRO J1744-28 was discovered with the Burst and Transient Source Experiment (BATSE) aboard the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory (GRO) in 1995 December (Fishman et al. 1995; Kouveliotou et al. 1996a). Between the discovery date and 1997 April, BATSE detected over 5800 type II bursts (i.e., accretion-powered, Lewin et al. 1996) from this source (Woods et al. 1999), many of which were also detected by instruments aboard the Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer (RXTE: Giles et al. 1996) and Ulysses , among others (e.g., KONUS-WIND, Aptekar et al. 1998). The initial source localization was a 6 $`\mathrm{°}`$ radius error circle (Fishman et al. 1995). Triangulation with BATSE and Ulysses resulted in a 24 $`\mathrm{}`$ wide annulus which intersected this error circle, and the use of the BATSE Earth occultation technique reduced the area of the localization further (Hurley et al. 1995). Observations using the Oriented Scintillation Spectrometer Experiment (Kurfess et al. 1995; Strickman et al. 1996), and BATSE observations of a variable, pulsating (467 ms period) quiescent source associated with the bursting source (Finger et al. 1996a,b; Paciesas et al. 1996) resulted in a still smaller error box. A subsequent RXTE observation produced an $``$ 5 sq. arcminute error box (Swank 1996; Giles et al. 1996). Within this error box, Frail et al. (1996a,b) found a variable radio source. Observations of the region around the radio source position with the Advanced Satellite for Cosmology and Astrophysics (ASCA) revealed a pulsating, bursting X-ray source with the same 467 ms period (Dotani et al. 1996a,b) whose position was consistent with that of the radio source, but a later ROSAT observation (Kouveliotou et al. 1996b; Augusteijn et al. 1997) with higher angular resolution found an X-ray source within the 1 $`\mathrm{}`$ radius ASCA error circle which was significantly displaced from the radio position. The radius of the ROSAT error circle is 10 $`\mathrm{}`$, corresponding to a 5 $`\mathrm{}`$ statistical error and a 8 $`\mathrm{}`$ systematic error, summed in quadrature. No confidence level can be quoted for the systematic error, but the statistical error corresponds to $`10\sigma `$ (J. Greiner, private communication).

Although the radio source was rejected as a possible counterpart to GRO J1744-28, optical and near-infrared observations of the ROSAT source region did uncover an object at the limit of the 10 $`\mathrm{}`$ radius ROSAT error circle which appeared to be variable (Augusteijn et al. 1997; Cole et al. 1997). These observations were carried out at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and at the Astrophysical Research Consortium’s Apache Point Observatory (APO). In some of the observations, it was not possible to rule out the apparent detection as an instrumental artifact (Augusteijn et al. 1997); in others, however, there was no reason to suspect that the detection was not valid (Cole et al. 1997).

It has been proposed that GRO J1744-28 is a low-mass X-ray binary system (LMXB), in which a neutron star with a dipole field B $`10^{11}\mathrm{G}`$ accretes matter from its companion. The rotation period of the neutron star is 467 ms, the orbital period of the system is 11.8 d, and the system is viewed nearly face-on (e.g. Daumerie et al. 1996). The distance is approximately that of the Galactic center.

Because of the difficulty of identifying the counterpart at various wavelengths in a crowded region of the sky towards the Galactic center, it is important to consider the details of the ROSAT observation. It was a short one (820 s) with the High Resolution Imager (HRI); only 273 photons were collected, and, in contrast to the ASCA observation, neither pulsations nor bursts were detected. (During the observation, no bursts were recorded by BATSE or Ulysses either, and the upper limit to the ROSAT pulsed flux is consistent with that derived from BATSE and RXTE observations.) From earlier ROSAT observations in which the source was not detected, it was concluded that the object was transient; based on the statistics of transient sources in the galactic plane, it was estimated that the probability of observing a random source unrelated to the bursting pulsar was less than 10<sup>-4</sup>. Since no energy spectra are recorded by the HRI, the ASCA spectrum was assumed to calculate the source flux; it was found to be $`2\times 10^9\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$ (unabsorbed) in the 0.1 - 2.4 keV energy range (Augusteijn et al. 1997). This observation took place in 1996 March. For comparison, the fluxes measured by ASCA in the 2 - 10 keV energy range were $`2\times 10^8\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$ in 1996 February and $`5\times 10^9\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$ in 1997 March (Nishiuchi et al. 1999). These fluxes would convert to unabsorbed 0.1-2.4 keV fluxes of $`9.7\times 10^9\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$ and $`2.4\times 10^9\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$ respectively using a simple extrapolation of the power-law continuum measured by Nishiuchi et al. (1999).

To summarize, there are good arguments both in favor of and against the idea that the true X-ray and optical/IR counterparts to GRO J1744-28 have been identified. In favor:

1. this was the only ROSAT source detected within the ASCA error circle,

2. it was transient, and

3. the variable optical/IR source was reliably detected in some of the observations of Cole et al. (1997).

Against:

1. no bursts or pulsations were observed by ROSAT (although the short duration of the observation may be to blame),

2. Augusteijn et al. (1997) estimate that the proposed optical/IR counterpart, if real, exhibited a change in its IR flux by a factor of 10 over a period of minutes, with no accompanying X-radiation; the detection could have been an artifact, and

3. the proposed optical/IR counterpart lies at the edge of or just outside the ROSAT error circle (depending on the astrometry).

Here we adopt the view that the true counterpart to GRO J1744-28 may not yet have been identified and localized with certainty, and we analyze the observations of bursts from GRO J1744-28 by Ulysses and BATSE in order to better constrain the position of the source.

## 2 Observations

We began this analysis by examining Ulysses GRB experiment (Hurley et al. 1992) data for each BATSE burst. Knowing the arrival time of a burst at BATSE, the coordinates of the Ulysses spacecraft, and the approximate source position, we extracted data for $`\pm `$ 100 s about the Ulysses crossing time. Although the bursting pulsar was a prolific source, it was not a particularly intense one, and this procedure resulted in the identification of only $``$ 500 bursts in the Ulysses data. Typically, these were count rate increases in the 3 - 6 $`\sigma `$ range. The vast majority of them were recorded in the untriggered data, which have a time resolution of 0.25 - 2 s, depending on the telemetry mode. We then retained only those bursts which were recorded by BATSE with 0.064 s time resolution, since these are the ones which can be cross-correlated with the Ulysses time histories with the best accuracy. Figure 1 shows one example. The final data set then consisted of 426 bursts, of which only 5 were recorded by Ulysses in triggered (32 ms resolution) data. The first event in this set was BATSE # 4042 on 1995 December 19, and the last was BATSE # 6085 on 1997 February 2.

Triangulation of a single burst results in an annulus of possible arrival directions whose width depends on the vector between the two spacecraft and the uncertainty in cross-correlating the two time histories (see, e.g. Hurley et al. 1999a). As examples, we show the first and last annuli in figure 2. Their widths are $`0.9\mathrm{}\mathrm{and}\mathrm{\hspace{0.25em}3.8}\mathrm{}(1\sigma )`$ respectively, and they intersect at an angle $`37\mathrm{°}`$, approximately the same angle as the displacement of the Earth-Ulysses vector during the period between the bursts. In figure 3 we show the distribution of the 426 annulus half-widths. The average total width is $`3.2\mathrm{}`$. We can predict what the approximate result might be of combining these annuli statistically. Two 3.2 $`\mathrm{}`$ wide annuli intersecting at an angle of 37 $`\mathrm{°}`$ form a box shaped roughly like a rhombus with diagonals 3.4 $`\mathrm{}`$ and 10 $`\mathrm{}`$. (The actual error region will be an ellipse inscribed in the rhombus, with minor and major axes somewhat smaller than the diagonals; for the purposes of this simple estimate we ignore this fact and base our calculation on the lengths of the diagonals, which will give us an overestimate of the final error region size.) The statistical combination of the 426 annuli should therefore be an elliptical error region with minor and major axes approximately $`3.4\mathrm{}/\sqrt{426}\mathrm{and}\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}10}\mathrm{}/\sqrt{426}`$, or 10 $`\mathrm{}`$ and 29 $`\mathrm{}`$ respectively. We show below that these are in fact close to, but larger than the final dimensions.

The statistical method for combining the results of multiple triangulations has been outlined in Hurley et al. (1999b). It consists of defining a chisquare-distributed variate which is a function of an assumed source position in right ascension and declination, and of the parameters describing the triangulation annuli. Let $`\alpha ,\delta `$ be the right ascension and declination of the assumed source position, and let $`\alpha _i,\delta _i,\theta _i`$ be the right ascension, declination, and radius of the ith annulus. Then the angular distance d<sub>i</sub> between the two is given by

$$d_i=\theta _i\mathrm{cos}^1(\mathrm{sin}(\delta )\mathrm{sin}(\delta _i)+\mathrm{cos}(\delta )\mathrm{cos}(\delta _i)\mathrm{cos}(\alpha \alpha _i))$$
(1)   
. If the 1 $`\sigma `$ uncertainty in the annulus width is $`\sigma _i`$, then

$$\chi ^2=\underset{i}{}\frac{d_i^2}{\sigma _i^2}.$$
(2)   
The assumed source position is varied to obtain a minimum chisquare; 1, 2, and 3 $`\sigma `$ equivalent confidence contours in $`\alpha `$ and $`\delta `$ are found by increasing $`\chi _{min}^2`$ by 2.3, 6.2, and 11.8.

The best fitting position for the 426 annuli is $`\alpha (2000)=17^\mathrm{h}44^\mathrm{m}32^\mathrm{s},\delta (2000)=28^\mathrm{o}44\mathrm{}31.7\mathrm{}`$, and has a $`\chi _{min}^2`$ of 415.7 for 424 degrees of freedom (426 annuli, minus the two fitting parameters $`\alpha ,\delta `$). For a large number of degrees of freedom m, the $`\chi ^2`$ distribution approaches the normal distribution with standard deviation $`\sqrt{2m}`$ and mean m. Thus the value we obtain for $`\chi ^2`$ lies 0.27 standard deviations from the mean and is an acceptable fit. Figure 4 shows the best fitting position, the ROSAT and ASCA error circles, and the two slightly different positions for the proposed optical counterpart found by Augusteijn et al. (1997) and Cole et al. (1997) (these sources are likely to be one and the same, considering their quoted astrometric uncertainties), along with the 1, 2, and 3 $`\sigma `$ error ellipses obtained in this analysis. The Augusteijn et al. (1997) and the Cole et al. (1997) positions for the proposed counterpart lie at $`\chi _{min}^2`$+12.3 and $`\chi _{min}^2`$+15.3, or at the 99.8% and 99.95% confidence levels, respectively. The VLA source position is off the map; it lies at $`\chi _{min}^2`$+1709, and is definitely excluded as a candidate in this analysis. The parameters of the 1, 2, and 3 sigma error ellipses are given in table 1. Figure 5 shows the distribution of the distances between the individual annuli and the best fit position.

## 3 Accuracy of the Method

One of the design goals of the Ulysses mission was an absolute timing accuracy of several milliseconds. To confirm that no large errors exist in the spacecraft timing and ephemeris, end-to-end timing tests are routinely carried out, in which commands are sent to the GRB experiment at precisely known times, and the times of their execution onboard the spacecraft are recorded and compared with the expected times. Because of command buffering on the spacecraft, there are random delays in the execution of these commands, and the timing is verified to different accuracies during different tests. The tests just before, during, and just after the series of 426 bursts analyzed here took place on 1995 December 5, 1996 October 1, and 1997 February 19, and indicated that the timing errors at those times could not have exceeded 50, 3, and 1 ms respectively. For comparison, the 1 $`\sigma `$ uncertainties in these triangulations are all greater than 125 ms. This includes both the statistical errors, and a conservative estimate of possible unknown timing and spacecraft ephemeris errors.

Two other independent confirmations of the accuracy of the triangulation method are first, the excellent agreement between the VLA and triangulated positions of SGR1900+14, using the same statistical method as the one we employ here (Hurley et al. 1999b), and second, the agreement between the triangulated positions and the positions of gamma-ray bursts with optical and/or X-ray counterparts (e.g. Hurley et al. 1999c).

Although there is no reason to suspect timing errors, it is difficult to prove beyond a doubt that they do not exist, so we have investigated the effects which such errors would have. We distinguish between two hypothetical types. The first is a constant, systematic offset in the timing of one spacecraft. For example, if the difference in the burst arrival times at the two spacecraft were systematically overestimated by a constant value of the order of several hundred milliseconds for each burst, the result would be to increase the radii of all the annuli, leaving the annulus widths and the coordinates of the annulus centers unchanged. (The increase in each radius would be almost, but not exactly the same, since it depends on the value of the interspacecraft vector, which changes from burst to burst as the spacecraft move.) The new annuli would still be consistent with a best-fitting position with an acceptable $`\chi _{min}^2`$, but the position would shift by 15 $`\mathrm{}`$ for every 100 ms of offset.

The second is a random error whose average value is zero, but whose value for any given burst may take on positive or negative values up to several hundred milliseconds. To simulate the effects of such errors we have added a random number to the difference in the spacecraft arrival times for each burst; the number is drawn from a Gaussian distribution with mean zero and standard deviation 100 ms. The effect of such an error would again be to change only the radii of all the annuli, but by different amounts whose average would be zero. Since the annulus widths are unaffected, the $`\chi _{min}^2`$ for the best-fitting position increases, but not to the point where it becomes unacceptable or even suspect. The best-fitting position shifted by 6 $`\mathrm{}`$ in this simulation.

Other types of errors can of course be imagined, but we reiterate that there is neither any indication that such errors exist, nor any means to disprove their existence entirely.

## 4 Discussion and Conclusions

Because pulsations and bursts were detected during the ASCA observation, there is no doubt that ASCA detected the X-ray counterpart to GRO J1744-28, but it is not well localized. If we accept the ROSAT source as the counterpart, then the combination of the 3 $`\sigma `$ error ellipse derived here and the ROSAT error circle gives a new, smaller error box whose area is $``$ 150 sq. arcsec., or about one half the ROSAT area. One reason to accept it is the fact that the error ellipse indeed overlaps it partially; we estimate the chance probability of an overlap between the two within the ASCA error circle to be $``$0.14. If we reject the ROSAT source as the counterpart, the appropriate error box for GRO J1744-28 becomes the entire 532 sq. arcsec. 3 $`\sigma `$ error ellipse. However, this implies that the X-ray counterpart must have faded to an undetectable flux during the ROSAT observation, or $`<5\times 10^{12}\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$ (unabsorbed).

In either case, the possible variable IR source is at or beyond the 3 $`\sigma `$ confidence levels of both the ROSAT and the triangulation regions. From a purely statistical point of view it is unlikely to be the counterpart, but it cannot be completely ruled out. The IPN error ellipse has been examined in four of the archived K’ images taken at APO and ESO. Their dates and limiting magnitudes are 1996 January 21 (APO: 14.4 $`\pm `$ 0.3), 1996 January 30 (APO: 15.2 $`\pm `$ 0.3), 1996 February 8 (ESO: 16.75 $`\pm `$ 0.3), and 1996 May 1996 (ESO: 17.1 $`\pm `$ 0.3). Comparing the first three with the last reveals no variable objects other than the previously identified IR source. However, based on the magnitudes of LMXB’s, Augusteijn et al. (1997) estimated that the quiescent counterpart to GRO J1744-28 might have a K magnitude $`18.7`$, or at least two magnitudes fainter than the completeness limit of their observations, and Cole et al. (1997) estimated that observations down to K’=20 were needed. It is also possible that the true counterpart is considerably farther away than the Galactic center, or that absorption in this direction is greater than expected.

Fortunately, it may be possible to resolve the ambiguity. The X-ray counterpart can be detected in an observation with the Chandra High Resolution Camera (HRC) if its flux has not decreased by more than a few orders of magnitude. Detection of pulsations would lead to an unambiguous identification of the counterpart, and the 1 $`\mathrm{}`$ HRC resolution would provide the smaller error box needed to carry out deeper searches for the IR counterpart.

KH is grateful to JPL for Ulysses support under Contract 958056, and to NASA for Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory support under grant NAG 5-3811.