P87	February 2004

¹ Institut d'Astrophysique et de Géophysique - Université de Liège, Allée du 6 Août, Bât B5c, B-4000 Liège (Sart Tilman), Belgium
² School of Physics & Astronomy, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston Birmingham B15 2TT, United Kingdom

^* Research Fellow FNRS, Belgium
^** Research Associate FNRS, Belgium

⁺ Based on observations with XMM-Newton, an ESA Science Mission with instruments and contributions directly funded by ESA Member States and the USA (NASA).

Abstract

     We report the first results of an XMM-Newton monitoring campaign of the NGC 6231 open cluster in the Sco OB1 association. This first paper focuses on the massive colliding wind binary HD 152248, which is the brightest X-ray source of the cluster. The campaign, with a total duration of 180 ksec, was split into six separate observations, following the orbital motion of HD 152248. The X-ray flux from this system presents a clear, asymmetric modulation with the phase and ranges from 0.73 to 1.18 10^-12 erg s^-1 cm^-2 in the [0.5-10.0 keV] energy band. The maximum of the emission is reached slightly after apastron. The EPIC spectra are quite soft and peak around 0.8-0.9 keV. We characterize their shape using several combinations of mekal models and power-law spectra and we detect significant spectral variability in the [0.5-2.5 keV] energy band.

     We also perform 2-D hydrodynamical simulations using different sets of parameters that closely reproduce the physical and orbital configuration of the HD 152248 system at the time of the six XMM-Newton pointings. This allows a direct confrontation of the model predictions with the constraints deduced from the X-ray observations of the system. We show that the observed variation of the flux can be explained by a variation of the X-ray emission from the colliding wind zone, diluted by the softer X-ray contribution of the two O-type stars of the system. Our simulations also reveal that the interaction region of HD 152248 should be highly unstable, giving rise to shells of dense gas that are separated by low density regions.

     Finally, we perform a search for short-term variability in the light curves of the system and we show that trends are present within several of the 30 ksec exposures of our campaign. Further, most of these trends are in good agreement with the orbital motion and provide a direct constraint on the first order derivative of the flux. In the same context, we also search for long-range correlations in the X-ray data of the system, but we only marginally detect them in the high energy tail of the signal.