Discovery of periodic dips in the light curve of GX 13+1: the X-ray orbital ephemeris of the source

Context. The bright low-mass X-ray binary (LMXB) GX 13+1 is one of the most peculiar Galactic binary systems. A periodicity of 24.27 d was observed in its power spectrum density obtained from data collected over 14 years by the All Sky Monitor (ASM) on board the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE).