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Related papers: X-ray observations of ultraluminous X-ray sources

200 papers

Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) are some of the most enigmatic X-ray bright sources known to date. It is generally accepted that they cannot host black holes as large as those associated with active galaxies, but they appear to be…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2015-05-28 D. J. Walton , T. P. Roberts , S. Mateos , V. Heard

Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) with 10^39 < L_x < 10^41 erg/s have been discovered in great numbers in external galaxies with ROSAT, Chandra, and XMM-Newton. The central question regarding this important class of sources is whether they…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-13 David Pooley , Saul Rappaport

We present the results from an X-ray and optical study of a new sample of eight extreme luminosity ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX) candidates, which were selected as the brightest ULXs (with L_X > 5x10^40 erg/s) located within 100 Mpc…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2015-06-04 Andrew D. Sutton , Timothy P. Roberts , Dominic J. Walton , Jeanette C. Gladstone , Amy E. Scott

The controversy over whether ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) contain a new intermediate-mass class of black holes (IMBHs) remains unresolved. We present new analyses of the deepest XMM-Newton observations of ULXs that address their…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-11 T. P. Roberts , A. -M. Stobbart , M. R. Goad , R. S. Warwick , J. Wilms , P. Uttley , J. N. Reeves

The ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) were isolated in external galaxies for the last 5 years. Their X-ray luminosities exceed 100-10000 times those of brightest Milky Way black hole binaries and they are extremely variable. There are two…

Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-24 S. Fabrika , P. Abolmasov

An XMM-Newton study of ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULX) has been performed in a sample of 10 nearby Seyfert galaxies. Eighteen ULX have been found with positional uncertainty of about 4". The large collecting area of XMM-Newton makes the…

The nature of ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) -- off-nuclear extra-galactic sources with luminosity, assumed isotropic, $\gtrsim 10^{39}$ erg s$^{-1}$ -- is still debated. One possibility is that ULXs are stellar black holes accreting…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2017-05-31 Davide Fiacconi , Ciro Pinto , Dominic J. Walton , Andrew C. Fabian

Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) represent the closest and most accessible laboratories to study sustained super-Eddington accretion onto compact objects. Over the past decade, the discoveries of coherent pulsations in a few ULXs has…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-12-24 R. Amato , M. Bachetti , R. Soria , A. Gúrpide , M. Imbrogno , C. Salvaggio , R. Salvaterra , M. Del Santo , S. Scaringi , P. Casella , A. Wolter

Ultraluminous X-ray sources are non-nuclear point sources exceeding the Eddington luminosity of a 10 Solar mass black hole. Modern consensus for a majority of the ULX population is that they are powered by stellar-mass black holes or…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2017-12-20 P. Kosec , C. Pinto , A. C. Fabian , D. J. Walton

Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) are a population of extragalactic objects whose luminosity exceeds the Eddington limit for a 10 Msun black hole (BH). Their properties have been widely interpreted in terms of accreting stellar-mass or…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2017-02-22 F. Pintore , L. Zampieri , L. Stella , A. Wolter , S. Mereghetti , G. L. Israel

Ultraluminous and hyperluminous X-ray sources (ULXs and HLXs) are among the brightest astrophysical objects in the X-ray sky. While ULXs most likely host stellar-mass compact objects accreting at super-Eddington rates, HLXs are compelling…

The small subset of hyper-luminous X-ray sources with luminosities in excess of ~1E41 erg/s are hard to explain without the presence of an intermediate mass black hole, as significantly super-Eddington accretion and/or very small beaming…

Since their discovery, Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) have attracted attention due to their combination of extreme luminosities and extra-nuclear locations. However, they are a fairly rare phenomenon, and attempts to investigate the…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2015-05-20 D. J. Walton , J. C. Gladstone , T. P. Roberts , A. C. Fabian

Many upcoming surveys, particularly in the radio and optical domains, are designed to probe either the temporal and/or the spatial variability of a range of astronomical objects. In the light of these high resolution surveys, we review the…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2015-06-18 Natalie Webb , David Cseh , Franz Kirsten

Ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULXs) are off-nuclear point sources in nearby galaxies with luminosities well exceeding the Eddington limit for stellar-mass objects. It has been recognized after the discovery of pulsating ULXs (PULXs) that a…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2020-01-22 M. Hakan Erkut , K. Yavuz Ekşi

The nature of the ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULX) is still to be understood. Several hypotheses have been suggested to explain the high X-ray luminosity: stellar mass black holes with emission collimated by relativistic effects or…

Astrophysics · Physics 2007-05-23 L. Foschini , G. Malaguti , G. Di Cocco , M. Cappi , M. Dadina , L. C. Ho

A puzzling class of exotic objects, which have been known about for more than 30 years, is reaching a new era of understanding. We have discovered hundreds of Ultra Luminous X-ray sources (ULXs) - non-nuclear sources with X-ray luminosity…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2014-12-19 Anna Wolter , Anthony P. Rushton , Mar Mezcua , David Cseh , Fabio Pintore , Isabella Prandoni , Zsolt Paragi , Luca Zampieri

The nature of ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULXs) has long been plagued by an ambiguity about whether the central compact objects are intermediate-mass (IMBH, >~ 10^3 M_sun) or stellar-mass (a few tens M_sun) black holes (BHs). The high…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2015-01-09 Rong-Feng Shen , Rodolfo Barniol Duran , Ehud Nakar , Tsvi Piran

In the last few years multiwavelength observations have boosted our understanding of Ultraluminous X-ray Sources (ULXs). Yet, the most fundamental questions on ULXs still remain to be definitively answered: do they contain stellar or…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2015-05-18 L. Zampieri , M. Colpi , M. Mapelli , A. Patruno , T. P. Roberts

We report the XMM-Newton detection of a moderately bright X-ray source superimposed on the outer arms of the inactive spiral galaxy MCG-03-34-63 (z=0.0213). It is clearly offset from the nucleus (by about 19'') but well within the D25…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-09-17 G. Miniutti , G. Ponti , M. Dadina , M. Cappi , G. Malaguti , A. C. Fabian , P. Gandhi