We report the discovery of one-hour long tails on the few-minutes long X-ray
bursts from the `clocked burster' GS 1826-24. We propose that the tails are due
to enduring thermal radiation from the neutron star envelope. The enduring
emission can be explained by cooling of deeper NS layers which were heated up
through inward conduction of heat produced in the thermonuclear shell flash
responsible for the burst. Similar, though somewhat shorter, tails are seen in
bursts from EXO 0748-676 and 4U 1728-34. Only a small amount of cooling is
detected in all these tails. This is either due to compton up scattering of the
tail photons or, more likely, to a NS that is already fairly hot due to other,
stable, nuclear processes.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics, 12 pages, 14
figure