A growing group of low-mass X-ray binaries are found to be accreting at very-faint X-ray luminosities of < 10 ^ { 36 } erg s ^ { -1 } ( 2–10 keV ) .
Once such system is the new X-ray transient IGR J17494–3030 .
We present Swift and XMM-Newton observations obtained during its 2012 discovery outburst .
The Swift observations trace the peak of the outburst , which reached a luminosity of \sim 7 \times 10 ^ { 35 } ( D/8 kpc ) ^ { 2 } erg s ^ { -1 } ( 2–10 keV ) .
The XMM-Newton data were obtained when the outburst had decayed to an intensity of \sim 8 \times 10 ^ { 34 } ( D/8 kpc ) ^ { 2 } erg s ^ { -1 } .
The spectrum can be described by a power-law with an index of \Gamma \sim 1.7 and requires an additional soft component with a blackbody temperature of \sim 0.37 keV ( contributing \sim 20 % to the total unabsorbed flux in the 0.5–10 keV band ) .
Given the similarities with high-quality spectra of very-faint neutron star low-mass X-ray binaries , we suggest that the compact primary in IGR J17494–3030 is a neutron star .
Interestingly , the source intensity decreased rapidly during the \sim 12 hr XMM-Newton observation , which was accompanied by a decrease in inferred temperature .
We interpret the soft spectral component as arising from the neutron star surface due to low-level accretion , and propose that the observed decline in intensity was the result of a decrease in the mass-accretion rate onto the neutron star .