Every Monday the IFA-UV organizes a meeting that starts with a short (or longer) presentation of 20 mins. The whole process requires the active participation by the students to present the speaker, control, the discussion, while there is also a feedback given by the audience to the speaker. This is a great opportunity for the students to help them gain experience especially when they have to present. However, the topics (and the stage) is open to everyone. And this Monday was my turn to present a short talk on:
“Searching for Hα counterparts of Be/X-ray binaries in the Small Magellanic Cloud”
Abstract: The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) hosts a large number of high-mass X-ray binaries, and in particular of Be/X-ray Binaries (BeXRBs; neutron stars orbiting OBe-type stars), offering a unique laboratory to address the effect of metalicity. One key property of their optical companion is Hα in emission, which makes them bright sources when observed through a narrow-band Hα filter. We performed a survey of the SMC Bar and Wing regions using wide-field cameras (WFI@MPG/ESO and MOSAIC@CTIO/Blanco) in order to identify the counterparts of the sources detected in our XMM-Newton survey of the same area. We obtained broad-band R and narrow-band Hα photometry, and identified ~10000 Hα emission sources down to a sensitivity limit of 18.7 mag (equivalent to ~B8 type Main Sequence stars). We find the fraction of OBe/OB stars to be 13% down to this limit, and by investigating this fraction as a function of the brightness of the stars we deduce that Hα excess peaks at the O9-B2 spectral range. Using the most up-to-date numbers of SMC BeXRBs we find their fraction over their parent population to be ~0.002-0.025 BeXRBs/OBe, a direct measurement of their formation rate.
After the talks it comes another important step which is the wine and cheese ceremony, accompanying the informal discussions.