In October 2007 a hard X-ray burst was detected by the INTEGRAL satellite from a direction consistent with the position of AX J1818.8 - 1559 , an X-ray source at low Galactic latitude discovered with the ASCA satellite in 1996-1999 .
The short duration ( 0.8 s ) and soft spectrum ( power law photon index of 3.0 \pm 0.2 ) of the burst in the 20–100 keV range are typical of Soft Gamma-ray Repeaters and Anomalous X–ray Pulsars .
We report on the results of an observation of AX J1818.8 - 1559Â obtained with the Suzaku satellite in October 2011 .
The source spectrum , a power law with photon index \sim 1.5 , and flux ( \sim 2 \times 10 ^ { -12 } erg cm ^ { -2 } s ^ { -1 } , 2-10 keV ) do not show significant variations with respect to the values derived from archival data of various satellites ( ROSAT , XMM–Newton , Chandra , Swift ) obtained from 1993 to 2011 .
We discuss possible interpretations for AX J1818.8 - 1559Â and , based on its association with the INTEGRAL burst , we propose it as a new member of the small class of magnetar candidates .