Tomography of a stellar X-ray corona: α Coronae Borealis^*

¹ Paul Scherrer Institut, Würenlingen & Villigen, CH-5232 Villigen PSI, Switzerland e-mail: guedel@astro.phys.ethz.ch; arzner@astro.phys.ethz.ch
² Columbia Astrophysics Laboratory, Columbia University, 550 West 120th Street, New York, NY 10027, USA e-mail: audard@astro.columbia.edu
³ SRON National Institute for Space Research, Sorbonnelaan 2, 3584 CA Utrecht, The Netherlands e-mail: r.mewe@sron.nl

Corresponding author: M. Güdel, guedel@astro.phys.ethz.ch

Received: 9 October 2002
Accepted: 12 February 2003

Abstract

We interpret the X-ray light curve obtained by XMM-Newton during a total X-ray eclipse in the nearby binary star α Coronae Borealis. This system consists of a G5 V main-sequence star orbiting an X-ray dark A0 star. The secondary G star is a young, active solar analog with an age of a few 100 Myr. As the primary A star eclipses active regions on the X-ray bright companion, the light curve drops in consecutive steps to zero; as individual active regions reappear during egress, the flux rises in similar steps. The ingress and egress light curves are combined to reconstruct the 2D distribution of X-ray brightness on and around the G star. Three different methods are applied, and variations due to statistical noise and uncertainties in the binary system parameters are discussed. Although the solutions are non-unique, all reconstructions reveal a similar distribution of X-ray bright regions and large areas with little flux. We present plausible estimates of (lower limits to) the electron densities in the bright regions, obtaining characteristic values between 10⁹– cm^-3.