On the proper motion of AXP 1E2259+586

H. Ogelman, E. Tepedelenlioglu

Published 2005-03-09Version 1

1E2259+586 belongs to the group of anomalous X-ray pulsars (AXP) which are thought to be magnetars. Accurate measurements of the proper motion for these interesting objects have not been made. In this work we use the data obtained by satellites ROSAT, Chandra and XMM-Newton taken in a period of 12 years to measure the change in position of 1E2259+586 with respect to the three field sources. Our work yielded an upper limit on the proper motion of ~170 mas/yr which corresponds to a transverse speed of 2500 km/s, for an assumed distance of 3 kpc. We also used this upper limit to put a lower limit on the age of the CTB 109 of ~6 kyr, assuming they are associated. The consistency of right ascension and declination measurements by different satellites suggest that we can average these measurements to get the best to date position of 1E2259+586.