Abstract
THERE are six known X-ray sources in the Magellanic Clouds: five in the Large Cloud and one in the Small Cloud1,2. Until recently, only SMC X-1 was known to be in a binary system3. Chevalier and Ilovaisky4 have now shown that the optical emission of the suggested counterpart of LMC X-4 (ref. 5) exhibits ellipsoidal light variations with an inferred binary period of 1.408 d. Previous X-ray observations have indicated that LMC X-4 is highly variable on time scales from minutes to months2,6–8. We report here the detection of several eclipses of LMC X-4, which confirms it as the second known extragalactic X-ray binary. We also discuss briefly the inferred value of the mass of the compact X-ray star.
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LI, F., RAPPAPORT, S. & EPSTEIN, A. Observation of X-ray eclipses from LMC X-4. Nature 271, 37–38 (1978). https://doi.org/10.1038/271037a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/271037a0
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