The odyssey of the black hole low-mass X-ray binary GX339−4 five years of dense multiwavelength monitoring

Open Access
Authors
  • J.C.A. Miller-Jones
  • I. Heywood
  • F. Carotenuto
  • S. Motta
  • A. Tzioumis
  • P.J. Groot
  • D.M. Russell
  • J. Crook-Mansour
  • P. Saikia
  • W. Yu
  • J. van den Eijnden ORCID logo
  • A.J. van der Horst
  • D.R.A. Williams-Baldwin
  • X. Zhang
Publication date March 2026
Journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Article number stag139
Volume | Issue number 546 | 3
Number of pages 14
Organisations
  • Faculty of Science (FNWI) - Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy (API)
Abstract
We present the longest and the densest quasi-simultaneous radio, X-ray, and optical campaign of the black hole low-mass X-ray binary GX339−4, covering five years of weekly GX339−4 monitoring with MeerKAT, Swift/XRT, and MeerLICHT, respectively. Complementary high-frequency radio data with the Australia Telescope Compact Array are presented to track in more detail the evolution of GX339−4 and its transient ejecta. During the five years, GX339−4 has been through two ‘hard-only’ outbursts and two ‘full’ outbursts, allowing us to densely sample the rise, quenching, and re-activation of the compact jets. Strong radio flares were also observed close to the transition between the hard and the soft states. Following the radio flare, a transient optically thin ejection was spatially resolved during the 2020 outburst, and was observed for a month. We also discuss the radio/X-ray correlation of GX339−4 during this five year period, which covers several states in detail from the rising phase to the quiescent state. This campaign allowed us to follow ejection events and provide information on the jet proper motion and its intrinsic velocity. With this work, we publicly release the weekly MeerKAT L-band radio maps from data taken between 2018 September and 2023 October.
Document type Article
Language English
Published at
https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stag139 (Final published version)
Other links
Downloads
Permalink to this page
Back