A Luminous Recurrent Supersoft X-ray Source in NGC 300
Astrophysics
2009-11-07 v1
Abstract
We report the results of XMM-Newton observations for an especially luminous supersoft X-ray source (SSS) with bolometric luminosity of 10^39 erg/s in the spiral galaxy NGC 300. The source was detected as a SSS in 1992 and disappeared in subsequent X-ray observations. The source was active again during recent XMM-Newton observations. It appeared to be very soft (kT~60 eV) and very luminous (~10^38 - 10^39 erg/s). The two XMM-Newton observations also reveal that the source went from a ``high'' state to a ``low'' state in 6 days. We also found a 5.4-hr periodicity during the ``low'' state. We consider white dwarf, black hole, and neutron star models to explain the nature of the source.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0304510,
title = {A Luminous Recurrent Supersoft X-ray Source in NGC 300},
author = {A. K. H. Kong and R. Di Stefano},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0304510},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
5 pages, 3 figures, ApJL accepted