Peak luminosities of bursts from GRO J1744-28 measured with the RXTE PCA; Italia: wij post 17 two 4s - a one man marching band - got darn bright.

GRO J1744-28, discovered by BATSE in December 95, is the second neutron star system known to produce frequent accretion powered bursts. The system has been regularly monitored with the RXTE PCA since the peak of the first outburst in January 96 at which time the observed persistent and bursting count rates were similar to 25,000 ct/sec and similar to 150,000 ct/sec, with corresponding instrumental deadtimes of similar to 10% and greater than or equal to 50%. We present a model which allows the reconstruction of the true incident count rate in the presence of enormous deadtime and use the model to derive a history of the peak luminosities and fluences of the bursts as a function of time. During the peak of the January 1996 and January 1997 outbursts, when the persistent emission was greater than or equal to 1 Crab, we infer peak luminosities of similar to 100 times the Eddington luminosity, and a ratio of persistent emission to integrated burst emission of similar to 34.