Displacement of X-Ray Sources from Star Clusters in Starburst Galaxies
Abstract
We examine the spatial offsets between X-ray point sources and star clusters in three starburst galaxies. We find that the X-ray sources are preferentially located near the star clusters. Because the star clusters are very good tracers of the star formation activity in the galaxies, this indicates that the X-ray sources are young objects associated with current star formation. We find significant displacements of the X-ray sources from the clusters. These displacements are likely due to motion of the X-ray sources and indicates that they are X-ray binaries. We find that brighter X-ray sources preferentially occur closer to clusters. The absence of very bright sources at large displacements from clusters may help constrain models of the sources.
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0312568,
title = {Displacement of X-Ray Sources from Star Clusters in Starburst Galaxies},
author = {P. Kaaret and A. Alonso-Herrero and J. S. Gallagher and G. Fabbiano and A. Zezas and M. J. Rieke},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0312568},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
to appear in MNRAS letters, 5 pages, figure 1 is in color, astro-ph version is low resolution