With its rapid response capabilities and daily planning of its
observing schedule, the Neil Genrels Swift Observatory is ideal for
following up transient objects. Over the 20 years since launch, Swift
has observed a large number of novae, from classical to recurrent, and
Galactic to extra-galactic. This sample includes four recurrent novae
which have each been followed through repeated...
Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) are our best laboratories for studying extreme super-Eddington accretion. Most studies of these objects are of relatively persistent sources; however, there is growing evidence to suggest a large fraction of these sources are transient. I will present results from Brightman et al (2023) on a sample of five newly reported transient ULXs in the galaxies NGC...
The Swift Supergiant Fast X-ray Transients Project was born 18 years ago as one of the initiatives to boost secondary science. It exploited Swift's fast automatic slewing, multi-wavelength capability, its flexible observing schedule and very low overheads to detect, characterise, and understand the physics underlying Supergiant Fast X- ray Transients (SFXT), high-mass X-ray binaries with an...
The Swift/BAT survey, thanks to the uniform exposure over the sky, has offered an unique opportunity for galactic population studies. In particular in the recent years a large number of hard X-ray emitting white dwarf binaries have been detected, the majority identified with follow-up observations as magnetic accretors. These systems have been longly supposed to constitute the dominant...
The Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) is currently the only hard X-ray telescope operating above 15 keV that is capable of continuously monitoring the outbursts of galactic X-ray binaries. This unique capability enables us to investigate the long-term spectral evolution of black hole X-ray binaries and facilitates the initiation of multiwavelength observations during specific phases of these...
The center of our Galaxy has been monitored with the Swift/XRT almost every day since 2006. Through the unique combination of high cadence and good X-ray sensitivity, this program provided excellent means to capture X-ray flares from the supermassive black hole Sgr A*, to study the accretion properties of 16 transient X-ray binaries, and to discover new X-ray transients. This talk will review...
