Related papers: An X-ray emitting black hole in a globular cluster
The origin of Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) in external galaxies whose X-ray luminosities exceed those of the brightest black holes in our Galaxy by hundreds and thousands of times is mysterious. The most popular models for the ULXs…
We report on the Chandra X-ray Observatory ACIS-S3 imaging observation of the Galactic globular cluster M4 (NGC 6121). We detect 12 X-ray sources inside the core and 19 more within the cluster half-mass radius. The limiting luminosity of…
We present the results from the high resolution Chandra observation of the Cartwheel galaxy. Many individual sources are resolved in the image, mostly associated with the outer ring. All detected sources have a very high X-ray luminosity…
We present spectroscopic observations of six optical counterparts of intermediate luminosity X-ray sources (ULXs) around nearby galaxies. The spectra of the six objects show the presence of broad emission features. The identification of…
We report the detection of hard X-ray emission (>2 keV) from a number of point sources associated with the very young massive star-forming region IRAS 19410+2336. The X-ray emission is detected from several sources located around the…
Deep observations of the X-ray Sky have now resolved most of the X-ray Background. Obscured active galaxies are a key component. The obscured objects which dominate at fluxes above $10^{-15}\ergpcmsqps$ are discussed and models in which the…
The observations and theory of the exciting new class of galactic black hole X-ray transients is reviewed. Seven of these systems have measured mass functions or mass estimates in excess of stable neutron stars, making them excellent black…
Galactic black hole binaries produce powerful outflows with emit over almost the entire electromagnetic spectrum. Here, we report the first detection with the Herschel observatory of a variable far-infrared source associated with the…
We present Keck LRIS spectroscopy of the black hole-hosting globular cluster RZ2109 in the Virgo elliptical galaxy NGC 4472. We find that this object has extraordinarily broad [OIII]5007 and [OIII]4959 emission lines, with velocity widths…
In the disk-corona model, the X-ray spectrum of a stellar-mass black hole in an X-ray binary is characterized by three components: a thermal component from a thin and cold accretion disk, a Comptonized component from a hot corona, and a…
The quantum genesis of Hawking radiation is a long-standing puzzle in black hole physics. Semi-classically one can argue that the spectrum of radiation emitted by a black hole look very much sparse unlike what is expected from a thermal…
The origin of the X-ray emission from the central region of the Galaxy has remained a mystery, despite extensive study over the past two decades. A fundamental question is the relative contribution of the point-source and diffuse components…
We recently discovered the X-ray/optical outbursting source 3XMM J215022.4-055108. It was best explained as the tidal disruption of a star by an intermediate-mass black hole of mass of a few tens of thousand solar masses in a massive star…
We review the timing and spectral evolution of black hole X-ray binary systems, with emphasis on the current accretion-ejection paradigm. When in outburst, stellar mass black hole binaries may become the brightest X-ray sources in the sky.…
Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) are accreting black holes that may contain the missing population of intermediate mass black holes or reflect super-Eddington accretion physics. Ten years of Chandra and XMM-Newton observations of ULXs,…
The key difference between neutron stars and black holes is the presence/absence of a solid surface. Recent attempts to detect this difference have concentrated on the quiescent luminosity, but here these sources are faint and difficult to…
We report on unprecedented short-term variations detected in the optical flux from the black hole binary system, V4641 Sgr. Amplitudes of the optical fluctuations were larger at longer time scales, and surprisingly reached ~60% around a…
We review observations of ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs). X-ray spectroscopic and timing studies of ULXs suggest a new accretion state distinct from those seen in Galactic stellar-mass black hole binaries. The detection of coherent…
Clusters of galaxies are the most massive objects in the Universe and precise knowledge of their mass structure is important to understand the history of structure formation and constrain still unknown types of dark contents of the…
The spectrum of the hard X-ray background records the history of accretion processes integrated over the cosmic time. Several observational and theoretical evidences indicate that a significant fraction of the energy density is obscured by…