Three new long-period X-ray pulsars discovered in the Small Magellanic Cloud

The Small Magellanic Cloud is increasingly an invaluable laboratory for studying accreting and isolated Xray pulsars. We add to the class of compact SMC objects by reporting the discovery of three new long-period X-ray pulsars detected with the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. The pulsars, with periods of 152, 304, and 565 s, all show hard X-ray spectra over the range 0.6-7.5 keV. The source positions of the three pulsars are consistent with known Halpha emission sources, indicating they are likely to be Be-type X-ray binary star systems.