Decoding the X-Ray Flare from MAXI J0709–159 Using Optical Spectroscopy and Multiepoch Photometry

We present a follow-up study on the recent detection of two X-ray flaring events by MAXI/Gas Slit Camera observations in soft and hard X-rays from MAXI J0709–159 in the direction of HD 54786 (LY CMa), on 2022 January 25. The X-ray luminosity during the flare was around 1037 erg s−1 (MAXI), which got reduced to 1032 erg s−1 (NuSTAR) after the flare. We took low-resolution spectra of HD 54786 from the 2.01 m Himalayan Chandra Telescope and the 2.34 m Vainu Bappu Telescope (VBT) facilities in India, on 2022 February 1 and 2. In addition to Hα emission, we found emission lines of He i in the optical spectrum of this star. By comparing our spectrum of the object with those from the literature we found that He i lines show variability. Using photometric studies we estimate that the star has an effective temperature of 20,000 K. Although HD 54786 is reported as a supergiant in previous studies, our analysis favors it to be evolving off the main sequence in the color–magnitude diagram. We could not detect any infrared excess, ruling out the possibility of IR emission from a dusty circumstellar disk. Our present study suggests that HD 54786 is a Be/X-ray binary system with a compact object companion, possibly a neutron star.