Astronomy&Astrophysicsmanuscriptno.astro-ph˙15737˙v2 (cid:13)c ESO2011 January17,2011 Finding a 24-day orbital period for the X-ray binary 1A 1118-616 R.Staubert1,K.Pottschmidt2,3,V.Doroshenko1,J.Wilms4,S.Suchy5,R.Rothschild5,andA.Santangelo1 1 Institutfu¨rAstronomieundAstrophysik,AbteilungAstronomie,Universita¨tTu¨bingen(IAAT),Sand1,72076Tu¨bingen,Germany 2 NASA-GoddardSpaceFlightCenter,AstrophysicsScienceDivision,Code661,Greenbelt,MD20771,USA 3 CenterforSpaceScienceandTechnology(CRESST),UniversityofMarylandBaltimoreCounty,1000HilltopCircle,Baltimore, MD21250,USA 4 Dr.KarlRemeis-SternwarteandErlangenCenterforAstroparticlePhysics,Universita¨tErlangen-Nu¨rnberg,Sternwartstr.7,96049 Bamberg,Germany 5 CenterforAstrophysicsandSpaceSciences(CASS),UniversityofCaliforniaSanDiego,LaJolla,CA92093-0424,USA 1 1 Received10.09.2010;accepted02.11.2010 0 2 ABSTRACT n a WereportthefirstdeterminationofthebinaryperiodandorbitalephemerisoftheBeX-raybinarycontainingthepulsar1A1118-616 J (35yearsafterthediscovery ofthesource). Theorbital periodisfound tobeP =24.0±0.4days. Thesource wasobserved by orb RXTEduringitslastlargeX-rayoutburstinJanuary2009,whichpeakedatMJD54845.4,bytakingshortobservationseveryfew 4 days,coveringanelapsedtimecomparabletotheorbitalperiod.Usingthephaseconnectiontechnique,pulsearrivaltimedelayscould 1 bemeasuredandanorbitalsolutiondetermined.Thedataareconsistentwithacircularorbit,andthetimeof90degreeslongitude wasfoundtobeT =MJD54845.37(10),whichiscoincidentwiththatofthepeakX-rayflux. ] π/2 E Key words.stars:binaries:general–stars:neutron–X-rays:general –X-rays:Bebinaries–X-rays:individuals:1A1118-616 – H Ephemerides . h p - 1. Introduction o r TheX-raytransient1A1118−61wasdiscoveredduringanout- t s burst in 1974 by the Ariel-5satellite in the 1.5–30keV range a (Eylesetal. 1975). The modulation with a period of 6.75min [ found in the data used by Ivesetal. (1975) was initially inter- 2 pretedastheorbitalperiodoftwocompactobjects.Fabianetal. v (1975) then suggested that the observed period may be due 9 to a slowly spinning accreting neutron star in a binary sys- 5 tem. The optical counterpart was identified as the Be-star He 4 3-640/Wray793byChevalier&Ilovaisky(1975)andclassified 2 as an O9.5IV-Ve star with strong Balmer emission lines and . 2 an extended envelope by Janot-Pachecoetal. (1981). The dis- 1 tancewasestimatedtobe5±2kpc(Janot-Pachecoetal.1981). 0 The classification anddistance was confirmedby Coe&Payne 1 (1985)usingUVobservationsofthesource. Fig.1. The light curve of the outburst of 1A 1118-616 as ob- v: A second strong X-ray outburst occurred in January 1992, served by RXTE/PCA (4–40keV) in January 2009. The time i which was observed by CGRO/BATSE (Coeetal. 1994). The resolutionis 16s. Thecontinuouscurveisthe dailylightcurve X measuredpeakfluxwas∼150mCrabforthe20-100keVenergy as seen by RXTE/ASM (scaled to the PCA count rate and r range,similartothatofthe1974outburst.Thisoutburstwasfol- smoothedbytakingtherunningmeanoffiveconsecutivedays). a lowedbyenhancedX-rayactivityfor∼60days,withtwoflare- likeeventsabout∼25dand∼49dafterthepeakoftheoutburst (seeCoeetal.1994, Fig.1).Pulsationswith ∼406.5swerede- tectedupto100keVandthepulseprofileshowedasinglebroad clusion is supported by pulsations from the source also being peak, close to a sinusoidal modulation with little change with detectedinquiescence(Rutledgeetal.2007). photonenergy.Aspin-upwitharateof0.016s/daywasobserved The source remained quiescentuntil January4, 2009 when duringthedecayoftheoutburst.Multi-wavelengthobservations a third outburst was detected by Swift (Manganoetal. 2009; revealed a strong correlation between the H equivalent width Mangano2009).Pulsationswithaperiodof407.68±0.02swere α and the X-ray flux. This led Coeetal. (1994) to conclude that reported by Mangano (2009). The complete outburst was reg- expansionofthe circumstellardisk oftheopticalcompanionis ularly monitored by RXTE. INTEGRAL observed the source mainlyresponsiblefortheincreasedX-rayactivity,includinga after the main outburst (Leyderetal. 2009). Suzaku observed largeoutburstifthereisenoughmatterinthesystem.Thiscon- 1A 1118−61 twice, once during the peak of the outburst and also∼20dayslaterwhenthefluxreturnedto itspreviouslevel. Sendoffprintrequeststo:[email protected] Doroshenkoetal.(2010)analyzedRXTE/PCAdataofthemost 2 R.Staubertetal.:Findinga24-dayorbitalperiodfortheX-raybinary1A1118-616 ("" ("# ’"" ("+ *&+(,-./,(,0&"1./$2!!((((""""""&’!()* +,-.%/0/1%2$3%%&45676*$%&"""""" " )#!"% #"" !"$ !"# !"" !"! !") !"+ !"$ !"& ("! (") ("+ ("$ ("& )"! %$($$)!# %$($$)!% %$($$)!’ %$($$)!* !"#$%&!’($% !"#$%%&’()* Fig.2. An example of a pulse profile (with 32 phase bins) of Fig.3.Anexamplelightcurvewith 16s resolutionofonecon- 1A1118-616asobservedin∼2.5ksbyRXTE/PCA(normalized tinuousobservationbyRXTE/PCAinthe4–40keVinterval,to- toameanfluxof1.0),correspondingtothefoldingof6pulses getherwiththebest-fitcosinefunction. withapulseperiodof∼407.7s.Thecenteroftheobservingtime isMJD54844.375.Theprofileisrepeatedsuchthattwophases Table1.Orbitalelements,P andP˙ of1A1118-616.The pulse pulse areshown.Thisprofilewasusedasatemplateinmeasuringrel- uncertaintiesare1σ(68%)fortwoparametersofinterest. ativephaseshiftsofprofilesfromotherintegrationintervalsand thecorrespondingpulsearrivaltimes. T [MJD(TDB)] = 54845.37±0.10 π/2 P [d] = 24.01±0.43 orb asini[lt-s] = 54.85±1.4 recent outburst with emphasis on spectral analysis, detecting a eccentricityǫ = 0.01 cyclotronresonantscatteringfeature(CRSF)at∼55keV. Ω[deg] = 360.01 In this letter, we report on an in-depth timing analysis of P [s]atT 2 = 407.6546±0.0011 pulse ref RXTE/PCA data overthe entire outburst in January 2009,and P˙ [ss−1]atT 2 = (−1.8±0.2)×10−7 pulse ref thediscoveryofanorbitalperiodof24.0d.Thissolutionissup- 1Theseparameterswerekeptfixed(seetext),2T =54841.2593913 ref ported by the timing of the three large X-ray outbursts seen in seetextregardingthisuncertainty historyandbytheanalysisofpulsearrivaltimesoftheJanuary 1992BATSEobservations. tion intervals ranged from ∼1500s to ∼15000s, corresponding tobetweenfourand38pulses.Nineteenpulseprofiles(with32 2. Observations phasebins)werethenconstructedbyepoch-foldingbarycenter- corrected event times (since the Earth is always moving with Weusedtwodatasets.First,andmostimportantly,weanalyzed respect to the source, the event arrival times are referenced to data obtained by RXTE/PCA during a 27-day monitoring of thecenterofthesolarsystem).Fig.2showsoneofthesepulse 1A 1118-616, which started on January 7, 2009, covering the profilesproducedbyaccumulatingsix pulses(centeredatMJD completeoutburst.Theresultinglightcurve(4–40keV)isshown 54844.375).Usingthisprofile,thepulsearrivaltimes(inMJD) in Fig. 1. The source flux peaked on January 14 and decayed for the other profiles were determined by template fitting. The over∼15days.Thedatastructureisdefinedbytheorbitsofthe uncertainties of these arrivaltimes are of the order of 10sec RXTEsatellite, with 29RXTEpointings of a typical duration (∼2.5%ofthepulseperiod). ofaroundonehour.Atotalexposureof87kswasobtained.The For the case of no binary modulation and non-zero first PCA data were all taken ineventmode(”Good Xenon”), pro- andsecondderivativesofthe pulse period,the expectedarrival vidingarrivaltimesforindividualevents.Thedatawerereduced timesas a function of pulse number n are given by (see, e.g., usingHEASOFTversion6.8. Kelleyetal.1980;Nagase1989;Staubertetal.2009) A second data set consists of pulse profiles generatedfrom 1 1 archivaldataoftheobservationoftheJanuary1992outburstby t =t +nP + n2 P P˙ + n3 P2P¨ +... (1) CGRO/BATSE,coveringabout12days. n 0 s 2 s s 6 s s With the given accuracy, it was possible to phase-connect the 19 pulse arrival times and determine values for the pulse pe- 3. Timinganalysisofpulsearrivaltimes riodanditsfirstderivativebyapplyinga quadraticfitinn.The sondderivativeP¨ wasnotconstrainedandsettozero.Inthisfit, 3.1.RXTE/PCA-2009 s significantsystematicresidualsremainedwithasine-likeshape Some timing analysis of the RXTE data was performed ear- andanamplitudeofseveraltensofseconds,indicativeofpulse lier byDoroshenkoetal. (2010),who determinedthe pulsepe- arrival-timedelaysduetoorbitalmotion.Addingtheadditional riod and an initial value of its derivative but failed to identify term the orbital modulation. Here, a more rigorous analysis is per- + asin i×cos[2π(t−T )/P ] (2) formed,which beginsin a similar way by selecting 19integra- π/2 orb tion intervals of the 29 pointings according to the time struc- yieldedanacceptablefitasexpectedforacircularbinaryorbit, tureoftheindividualsatellitepointings(Fig.1).Theseintegra- asini being the projected radius of the orbit in light-seconds, R.Staubertetal.:Findinga24-dayorbitalperiodfortheX-raybinary1A1118-616 3 "# "# $# $# %# %# $%&’&()&*+,-.!&&### $%&’&()&*+,-.!&&### !%# !%# !$# !$# !"# !"# %"$#$ %"$’# %"$’% %"$’" %"$&& %"$&$ %"$(# %"$(% ’%"(" ’%"%& ’%"%$ ’%"’# ’%"’% ’%"’" ’%"$& ’%"$$ !"# !"# Fig.4.Delaysofthepulsearrivaltimesin1A1118-616forthe Fig.5.Delaysofthepulsearrivaltimesin1A1118-616forthe outburstofJanuary2009asobservedbyRXTE/PCAandbest- outburstinJanuary1992asobservedbyCGRO/BATSE. fitsinecurveforcircularorbitalmotionwithaperiodof24.0d. Thedotsaroundzeroaretheresidualstothebest-fitsolution. 3.2.CGRO-1992 The second data set is from observations of the January 1992 outburst by CGRO/BATSE. This outburst is described well in Coeetal. (1994). Pulse profiles were generated using and T (= T ) in MJD being the time at which the mean π/2 90 phase/energy channel matrices for all eight BATSE detectors orbital longitude of the neutron star is 90◦, corresponding to which are stored at the HEASARC archive. 1 For each detec- the maximum delay in pulse arrival time. We found that asini tor,eventsinthe20–40keVenergyrange(accordingto theen- ∼55light-s,P ∼24d,T MJD∼54845,P ∼407.7s,and orb 90 pulse ergy calibration provided) were selected and sorted into com- P˙ ∼−1.9×10−7ss−1. s mon pulse profiles with 128 phase bins. This was done for 12 Wethenrealizedthatbyusingtheoriginallightcurve,asam- differentintegrationintervals, coveringabout12daysof obser- ple ofwhichisshownin Fig. 3, we were ableto determinethe vation (MJD 48621–48633). Pulse arrival times in MJD were pulsearrivaltimesmoreaccurately,whenfittedpiecewisewitha determinedbytemplatefitting.Fig.5showsthedelaysofpulse cosinefunction(keepingthepulseperiodfixedatthepreviously arrival times as found from a pulse phase connection analysis. foundbest-fitvalues,andleavingthemeanflux,theamplitude, Assumingan orbitalperiodof 24.0d, the best-fitsolutionfor a and the zero phase as free parameters). The same 19 integra- circularorbitleadstotheparametersofP =406.53±0.02s, pulse tionintervalsasbeforewereused.Thephaseconnectionanaly- P˙ =(−3.1±0.9)×10−7ss−1,andT =MJD48633.5±2.5d. pulse π/2 sisofthepulsearrivaltimesdeterminedinthiswaythenleadsto WhenthedifferencebetweentheT valuefromtheRXTEob- π/2 the orbital elements and pulse period information summarized servation(seeTable1)andtheonefromtheBATSEobservation in Table 1. The pulse delay times and the residuals against the is divided by the orbital period of 24.0d, we find a separation expecteddelaysforthebest-fitcircularorbitisshowninFig.4. of258.83orbitalcycles.If,inturn,wedividetheseparationby Theχ2ofthisbestfitwas21.0for15dof(degreesoffreedom). 259 cycles, we determinea cycle length of 23.98d. The corre- In finding this solution, we assumed a vanishing eccentric- spondinguncertaintyinthisvalueis0.01d.However,wecannot ity and a fixed value of 24.0d for the orbital period.When the be certain wether the separation is really 259 cycles, since the orbitalperiodwasleftasafreeparameter,wefoundthatP = previouslyfounduncertaintyof0.4dintheorbitalperiodwould orb 24.0±0.4d. This uncertaintyis expected to be large since our permitanycyclenumberbetween255and263. observationscoveronly27days,littlemorethanoneorbitalcy- cle. 4. Othersupportforthe24.0dorbitalperiod Finally, we attempted a properorbitalsolution with the ec- centricityǫandthelongitudeofperiastronpassageΩincludedas 4.1.TimingoflargeX-rayoutbursts freeparametersbysolvingKepler’sequation.Thedatadoallow ThreelargeX-rayoutburstsof1A1118-616havebeenobserved one to define a pair of parameters with reasonably constrained uncertaintiesofǫ =0.10±0.02andΩ=(310±30)◦.However, sofar.Thefirstoneoccurredin December1974,leadingtothe originaldiscoveryofthesourcebyARIEL-5(Eylesetal.1975; weconsidertheevidenceofanon-zeroeccentricityasmarginal. Ivesetal. 1975). At this time, a modulation with a period of Byintroducingthesetwoadditionalfreeparameters,theχ2 was 6.75min was also discovered. The second burst was observed reducedfrom21.0(15dof)to16.4for(13dof).AnF-testyielded by CGRO/BATSE in January 1992 (Coeetal. 1994), with en- aratherlargeprobabilityof∼22%fortheimprovementtohave hancedX-rayactivityfor∼80days.Thethird,mostrecentout- occuredbychance.Furthermore,nosystematicuncertaintiesof burst occurred in January 2009 and was observed by several anykindwereconsidered. X-ray satellites: Swift (Manganoetal. 2009; Mangano 2009), Wenotethatthevaluesforthepulseperiodanditsderivative RXTE (Doroshenkoetal. 2010), INTEGRAL (Leyderetal. given in Table 1 differ from those stated by Doroshenkoetal. (2010) because of the missing orbital correctionsin the earlier 1 ftp://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/compton/data/batse/pulsar/ analysis. groundfolded/A1118-6 4 R.Staubertetal.:Findinga24-dayorbitalperiodfortheX-raybinary1A1118-616 ’"! "! &"# &% &$ !&’()*&&+,-./.0,1$%%&""""#!#! ,-.*/#01#12%/*)#&&&!"#% % + $ $$"! # !"# " !"! ! #’(!! #’)!! #’*!! #’+!! ##!!! !’! !’( &’! &’( "’! !"# !"#$%&#’(%)* Fig.6.AsectionoftheX-raylightcurveof1A1118-616asob- Fig.7.FrequencyhistogramofASMsmallflareswithpeakflux servedbytheRXTE/ASM(smoothedusinga runningmeanof >0.5cts/s(fromsmootheddailylightcurves)asafunctionofthe five consecutivedays).The large burstof January2009,reach- 24.012dphase. ing a peak flux of 7.6cts/s at MJD 54845.4 is included. The shortverticallinesareatphase0.0withrespecttotheephemeris with P = 24.012d and the arrowspoint to those small flares 4.3.TimingofsmallX-rayflares orb with peak fluxes>0.5cts/s (dottedhorizontalline), which hap- InthesectionoftheASMlightcurveshowninFig.6,threesmall penclosetophase0.0(severalothersappeartohappencloseto peaksbeforethebigburst(highlightedbysmallarrows)happen phase0.5). quite close to phase zero. There are also flares at other phases, but counting the numberof flares with peak fluxes higherthan 0.5cts/soverthecompleteASMlightcurve(MJD50087-MJD 55315),wefind39outof86flares(45%)betweenphase-0.15 and+0.15.Therestarealmostuniformlydistributedwithaslight 2009), and Suzaku. Also in this case, the source continued to enhancementaroundphase0.5.Theanalysisofexcursionswith exhibit high activity for about 70days after the large outburst. fluxes>1.0cts/sconfirmsthisresult:15outof32eventsbetween Fromthecitedpublications,wedeterminedthetimeofthepeak phase -0.15and +0.15.Fig. 7 showsthe frequencydistribution fluxes in these outbursts to be MJD 42407.0, MJD 48626.0, for the case of the >0.5cts/s peaks. When the same analysis is and MJD 54845.4, respectively, with an estimated uncertainty repeated with orbital periods corresponding to separations be- of ±1day in all cases. Taking the abovevalue of 24.0d for the tween the large outbursts other than 259 orbital cycles (that is orbital period, the outbursts in December 1974 and the one in between 255 and 263), the rate of coincidencesof small flares January 2009 occurred 259 orbits before and after the one in with phase zero is significantly less. We take this as an indica- January1992.But,again,becauseoftheuncertaintyinPorb the tion,notproof,that259isprobablytherightnumber. separations could range from 255 to 263 orbital cycles, corre- When a simple epoch folding of the long-term light curve spondingtoaseriesofperiodvaluesseparatedbyabout0.1d.In of1A1118-616asobservedbyRXTE/ASMisdone,nosignif- Section4.3,however,wepresentevidencethat259maybe the icant peak is found at ∼24d. This is not inconsistent with the correct number. Assuming that this is indeed so, a linear fit to above considerations of medium size and small X-ray flares: the threeoutbursttimes leadsto a periodof (24.012±0.003)d there are only very few (not well aligned) medium size flares, (thesmalluncertaintybeingduetothelongbaselineintime). occurringafterthebigoutbursts,andthesmallflares(>0.5cts/s) have such low fluxes that both types of flares are completely buriedinthe”noise”representedbythedailyfluxmeasurements 4.2.Timingofmedium-sizeX-rayflares <0.5cts/s. When a dynamicalpowerdensityspectrum (PDS) (seee.g.Wilmsetal.2001)isgenerated(withanindividualdata Asalreadymentioned,thesourceremainsparticularlyactiveaf- set length of 2000d and a step size of 10d), a weak signal in terthesecondaswellasafterthethirdlargeoutburstforseveral the form of a broad peak between 22d and 25d is found. The tens of days. Fig. 1 in Coeetal. (1994) shows this for the sec- PDSiscapableofdetectingquasi-periodicsignalsallowingfor ond large burst (observedbyCGRO/BATSE in January 1992): frequencyvariationswithtime. thereishighlystructuredX-rayemissionwithseveralpeaks,the largest of which are around ∼26d and ∼49d after the peak of thelargeburst(withpeakfluxes∼0.5and∼0.4ofthebigburst, 5. Inclinationandmassfunction respectively). In Fig. 6, we show the light curve in the vicin- ity of the third large burst (of January 2009) as observed by Usingtheorbitalelementsdeterminedaboveandanestimateof RXTE/ASM(inasmoothedversionofthedailylightcurvewith themassoftheopticalcompanion,wecanconstraintheinclina- arunningmeanoffiveconsecutivedays).Threepeakscanalso tionofthebinaryorbitof1A1118/He3-640.Theopticalcom- beidentifiedwithin∼70d ofthethelargeburst,noneofwhich panionwasclassifiedbyJanot-Pachecoetal.(1981)asanO9.5 correspondsexactlyto phasezero,butthe secondandthe third III-Ve star with strong Balmer emission lines and an extended one are close (the mean of the three separations- starting with envelope.Motchetal.(1988)assumedamassof18 M forthe ⊙ thelargeburst-is∼23d). opticalcompanion.WhenthecalibrationofO-starparametersof R.Staubertetal.:Findinga24-dayorbitalperiodfortheX-raybinary1A1118-616 5 Martinsetal.(2005)isused,thevalueof18M isconfirmed(in- shortnessofthelargeroutburstsmayhavehelpedthe24dorbital ⊙ terpolatingthevaluesforO9.5ofTables4and5ofMartinsetal. periodescapedetectionfor35yrsafterthesource’sdiscoveryin 2005).Adoptingthisvalueandassuming1.4M forthemassof 1975. 1A 1118-616 is indeed at the edge of the Be star distri- ⊙ theneutronstar,Kepler’sthirdlawleadstoaphysicalradiusof butiontowardstheregionwherewind-fedSGXRBs(supergiant the (circular) orbit of a = 219.1light-s. The observed a sin i = X-raybinaries) accumulate,and the secondmostoffset Be star 54.85light-sthenleadsto sin i= 0.25andto the inclinationof after SAX J2103.5+4545.For the latter, Reigetal. (2004) had i = 14.5◦. This value is consistent with no eclipses being ob- discussed a physical reason for the slow spin at a rather short served. The mass function is f(M) = (m sin i)3 / (m +m )2 = orbital period, namely that long episodes of quiescence in Be 2 1 2 1.14×10−4. X-ray systems can cause a spin down to an equilibriumperiod thatisexpectedforwind-drivenaccretion.Thismayalsoapply to 1A 1118-616 and is consistent with the observed moderate 6. Discussion spin-uprate(∼1.1Hzs−1)duringitsoutburstsinJanuary2009. The detection of the period of 24days for the binary orbit of A discussion of variousalternative ways of reaching very long 1A1118-616restsmainlyontheobservationandanalysisofor- spinperiodsisgiveninFarrelletal.(2008)inthecontextofin- bitaldelaysofthearrivaltimesoftheX-raypulses(withapulse vestigatingtheextremelyslow(∼2.7h)pulsar2S0114+650. period of ∼407s). The main data set is from observations by RXTE/PCA,whichsampledthelargeX-rayoutburstofJanuary Acknowledgements. We acknowledge the support through DLR grant 50 OR 0702. RSt likes to thank Klaus Werner and Dima Klochkov for 2009. Fortunately, the duration of the outburst as well as the discussions about the optical companion and the analysis of the ASM light length of the observations were long enough to cover slightly curve,respectively.RERandSSacknowledgethesupportunderNASAcontract morethanonecompleteorbit.Itwasalsofortunatethatthesam- NAS5-30720. Wethank Robin Corbet forpointing us to SAX J2103.5+4545 plingpatternwasdenseenoughtoallowpulsephaseconnection andforhisdatacollectionoftheCorbet-diagram. betweenthesamplingintervals.However,withdataforonlyone orbitthedeterminationoftheorbitalperiodusingthesedatahas References a ratherlargeuncertaintyof about±0.4d.We asume thisvalue of0.4dasthefinaluncertaintyintheorbitalperiod,despitethe Chevalier,C.&Ilovaisky,S.A.1975,IAUCirc.,2778,1 evidence from the small flares that 24.012d, corresponding to Coe,M.J.&Payne,B.J.1985,A&AS,109,175 Coe,M.J.,Roche,P.,Everall,C.,etal.1994,A&A,289,784 a separation of 259 orbital cycles between the three large out- Corbet,R.1986,MNRAS,220,1047 bursts,maybethecorrectvalue. Doroshenko,V.,Suchy,S.,Santangelo,A.,etal.2010,A&A,515,L1 FortheJanuary2009outburst,wehavefoundthatthepeak Eyles,C.J.,Skinner,G.K.,Willmore,A.P.,&Rosenberg,F.D.1975,Nature, of the X-ray flux coincides with T , i.e., an orbital longitude 254,577 π/2 of90◦,whiletheformalvalueofΩwasdeterminedtobe310◦. Fabian,A.C.,Pringle,J.E.,&Webbink,R.F.1975,Nature,255,208 Farrell,S.,Sood,R.,O’Neill,P.,&Dieters,S.2008,MNRAS,389,608 This supports our reservation of taking the formally achieved Grundstrom,E.D.,Boyajian,T.S.,Finch,C.,Gies,D.R.,&etal.2007,ApJ, ǫ / Ω combination seriously: an F-test does give a rather high 660,1398 probability (∼22%) that the improvement in χ2 (when these Ives,J.C.,Sanford,P.W.,&Burnell,S.J.B.1975,Nature,254,578 two free parameters are introduced) is just by chance. On the Janot-Pacheco,E.,Ilovaisky,S.A.,&Chevalier,C.1981,A&A,99,274 Kelley,R.,Rappaport,S.,&Petre,R.1980,ApJ,238,699 other hand, the finding that a majority of the small flares and Kiziloglu,U¨.,O¨zbilgen,S.,Kiziloglu,N.,&Baykal,A.2009,A&A,508,895 oneof the largebursts dooccurat or aroundphasezero of our Leyder,J.,Walter,R.,&Lubinski,P.2009,ATEL,1949,1 24.012dephemerisindicatesthattheeccentricitymaybesome- Mangano,V.2009,ATEL,1896,1 whatlargerthanzero,butmostlikely<0.16. Mangano,V.,Baumgartner,W.H.,Gehrels,N.,etal.2009,GCN,8777,1 Martins,F.,Schaerer,D.,&Hillier,D.J.2005,A&A,436,1049 For completeness,we mentionherethatin opticalobserva- Motch,C.,Janot-Pacheco,E.,Pakull,M.,&Mouchet,M.1988,A&A,201,63 tionsofHe3-640/Wray793largevaluesofH equivalentwidth α Nagase,F.1989,PASJ,41,1 are occasionally observed. Coeetal. (1994) had found a value Reig,P.,Ngueruela,J.,Fabregat,J.,etal.2004,A&A,421,673 in excess of 100Angstrom on MJD 48706 (80d after the peak Reig,P.,Slowikowska,A.,Zezas,A.,&Blay,P.2010,MNRAS,401,55 of the January 1992 large X-ray outburst) and they associated Rodriguez,J.,Tomsick,A.,Bodaghee,A.,etal.2009,A&A,508,889 Rutledge,R.E.,Bildsten,L.,Brown,E.F.,etal.2007,ApJ,658,514 the two phenomena with each other, which is clearly justified Staubert,R.,Klochkov,D.,&Wilms,J.2009,A&A,500,883 by examples of these associations in other Be X-ray binaries Wilms,J.,Nowak,M.,Pottschmidt,K.,Heindl,W.,&Dove,J.B.andBegelman, (Grundstrometal.2007;Kizilogluetal.2009;Reigetal.2010). M.C.2001,MNRAS,320,327 WithrespecttothetimingofthethreeobservedlargeX-ray bursts, we emphasize that the two separations are the same at 17.04yrs. Motchetal. (1988) already concluded that the enve- lopeofHe3-640isprobablynotinastationarystatebutunder- goesexpansionandcontractionphasesonatimescaleofseveral years.”We suggestthatthe17yrsbetweenthelargeX-rayout- burstsisacharacteristicperiodfortheoscillationoftheenvelope ofHe3-640. Finally, we look at the position of 1A 1118-616 in the Corbet-diagram,whichrelatestheorbitalperiodtothespinpe- riod (see e.g., Reigetal. 2004; Rodriguezetal. 2009). For Be binaries,thereisconsiderablescatteraroundameancorrelation trend,which was quantifiedby Corbet(1986) by the following formula:P = 10 days× (1−e)−2/3 (P /1 s)1/2. According orb spin to this formula, an orbital period of ∼200d or more had been expected(e.g., Motchetal. 1988), a prediction that in addition tothegenerallylowleveloftheX-rayfluxandtherarenessand