A half-a-day long thermonuclear X-ray burst from KS-1731-260

We report on an approximately twelve hour long X-ray are from the low-mass X-ray binary KS 1731-260. The are has a rise time of less than 13 min and declines exponentially with a decay time of 2.7 hours. The are emission is well described by black-body radiation with peak temperature of 2.4 keV. The total energy release from the event is 10 42 erg (for an assumed distance of 7 kpc). The are has all the characteristics of thermo-nuclear X-ray bursts (so-called type I X-ray bursts), except for its very long duration and therefore large energy release (factor of 1500-4000 longer and 250-425 more energy than normal type I X-ray bursts from this source). The are is preceded by a short and weak X-ray burst, possibly of type I. Days to weeks before the are, type I X-ray bursts were seen at a rate of similar to3 per day. However, after the are type I X-ray bursting ceased for at least a month, suggesting that the X-ray are affected the type I bursting behaviour. The persistent emission is not significantly different during the non-bursting period. We compare the characteristics of this event with similar long X-ray flares, so-called superbursts, seen in other sources (4U 1735-44, 4U 1820-30, 4U 1636-53, Ser X-1, GX 3+1). The event seen from KS 1731-260 is the longest reported so far. We discuss two possible mechanisms that might cause these superbursts, unstable carbon burning (as proposed recently) and electron capture by protons with subsequent capture of the resulting neutrons by heavy nuclei.