Non-solar gamma and X-ray astronomy: optical observations: (Invited discourse)

Abstract

An optical astronomer enters this field only by courtesy of those X-ray astronomers who pay some attention to accurate positional measurements of X-ray sources. So my first and last words are to ask X-ray observers to give more time to establishing positions of X-ray sources. It appears that in fact most effort has been spent on spectral measurements of X-rays, and this has led just to the classification of sources according to either of two mechanisms for the production of the continuum. In one or two early instances the extrapolated X-ray spectrum has been useful for predicting the brightness of the optical counterpart to be found. A typical uncertainty of making optical identification is that of Vel XR-1 for which Gursky et al. (1968) have given a position with an error box of 3 square degrees. One candidate I can suggest for this is CU Vel, the only variable star of the 1958 General Catalogue of Variable Stars inside the error box. It is interesting because it is assigned to the U Gem class with a range of photographic magnitudes from 10.7 to 15.5. The stellar spectrum has not been observed.