1. Ultraluminous X-ray sources in seven edge-on spiral galaxies
- Author
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Daryl Haggard, Jay Strader, Konstantinos Kovlakas, Stephen E. Zepf, Arash Bahramian, R. Urquhart, Noah Vowell, Erica Thygesen, Thomas J. Maccarone, Arunav Kundu, and Kristen C. Dage
- Subjects
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE) ,Physics ,Spiral galaxy ,010308 nuclear & particles physics ,Astrophysics::High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena ,FOS: Physical sciences ,Astronomy and Astrophysics ,Astrophysics::Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics ,Astrophysics ,01 natural sciences ,Galaxy ,Accretion (astrophysics) ,Space and Planetary Science ,Bulge ,0103 physical sciences ,Halo ,Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena ,Low Mass ,010303 astronomy & astrophysics ,Astrophysics::Galaxy Astrophysics - Abstract
We investigate a sample of seven edge-on spiral galaxies using Chandra observations. Edge-on spiral galaxies allow us to clearly separate source associated with their star-forming regions versus the outer edges of the system; offering a clear advantage over other systems. We uncover a number of X-ray point sources across these galaxies, and after eliminating contaminating foreground and background sources, we identify 12 candidate ultraluminous X-ray sources. All of these sources are projected onto the central regions, implying that the majority of ULXs in this sample of spiral galaxies are disk/bulge, and thus not halo sources. This also includes two transient ULXs, which may be long-duration transients and low mass X-ray binaries. This finding illustrates the need for further studies of transient ULXs., accepted to MNRAS
- Published
- 2021