Related papers: NGC 300 X-1 is a Wolf-Rayet/Black-Hole binary
Cygnus X-1 is a binary star system that is comprised of a black hole and a massive giant companion star in a tight orbit. Building on our accurate distance measurement reported in the preceding paper, we first determine the radius of the…
We present the first radial velocity curve of the companion star to BW Cir which demonstrates the presence of a black hole in this X-ray transient which recorded outbursts in 1987 and 1997 (and possibly 1971-2). We identify weak absorption…
We present a statistical analysis of the He ii 4686 emission line in the spectra of the black hole and Wolf-Rayet (WR) star of the high-mass X-ray binary IC10 X-1. This line is visibly skewed, and the third moment (skewness) varies with the…
We present outburst spectroscopy of GX339-4 which may reveal the motion of its elusive companion star. NIII lines exhibit sharp emission components moving over ~300 km/s in a single night. The most plausible interpretation of these…
The star NGC 3603-A1 has long been known to be a very massive binary, consisting of a pair of O2-3If*/WN5-6 stars, which show Wolf-Rayet-like emission due to their luminosities being near the Eddington limit. The system has been poorly…
There are no known double black hole (BH-BH) or black hole-neutron star (BH-NS) systems. We argue that Cyg X-3 is a very likely BH-BH or BH-NS progenitor. This Galactic X-ray binary consists of a compact object, wind-fed by a Wolf-Rayet…
The compact X-ray source in the eclipsing X-ray binary IC 10 X-1 has reigned for years as ostensibly the most massive stellar-mass black hole, with a mass estimated to be about twice that of its closest rival. However, striking results…
As part of our massive spectroscopic survey of 25 Galactic globular clusters with MUSE, we performed multiple epoch observations of NGC 3201 with the aim of constraining the binary fraction. In this cluster, we found one curious star at the…
We used the Australia Telescope Compact Array to map a large field of approximately $2^{\circ} \times 2^{\circ}$ around the Sculptor group galaxy NGC~300 in the 21-cm line emission of neutral hydrogen. We achieved a $5 \sigma$ \ion{H}{i}…
NGC 300 ULX1 is the fourth to be discovered in the class of the ultra-luminous X-ray pulsars. Pulsations from NGC 300 ULX1 were discovered during simultaneous XMM-Newton / NuSTAR observations in Dec. 2016. The period decreased from 31.71 s…
Wray 977, the B supergiant companion of the X-ray pulsar GX301-2, should be classified as B1~Ia+, based on a comparison of its optical spectrum to that of zeta1 Sco, a well-known B hypergiant and ONE OF THE BRIGHTEST STARS IN THE GALAXY.…
Stellar-mass black holes have been detected by radial-velocity observations in star/black hole binaries. These allow only the determination of the mass function. Tracking the astrometric orbits of the visible components of the star/black…
The supernova impostor SN 2010da located in the nearby galaxy NGC 300, later identified as a likely supergiant B[e] high-mass X-ray binary, was simultaneously observed by NuSTAR and XMM-Newton between 2016 December 16 and 20, over a total…
There has been a recent suggestion that Cyg X-3 contains a black hole (BH) of mass ~17 solar mass. This interpretation is closely linked to a previous claim that Cyg X-3 contains a Wolf-Rayet star of mass ~ 10 solar mass. The latter…
The amount of data available for NGC 1313 X-2 make it a cornerstone for the study of ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs). We modelled the optical and X-ray data of this ULX with a binary evolution code that takes into account X-ray…
I report the detection of two X-ray sources of luminosities $\sim 10^{36} {\rm~ergs~s^{-1}}$ in the central region of 30 Doradus. These two sources appear point-like in images taken with the {\sl ROSAT} HRI. One of the sources is most…
We present the first visual orbit for the nitrogen-rich Wolf-Rayet binary, WR 133 (WN5o + O9I) based on observations made with the CHARA Array and the MIRC-X combiner. This orbit represents the first visual orbit for a WN star and only the…
Cyg X-3 is a highly interesting accreting X-ray binary, emitting from the radio to high-energy gamma-rays. It consists of a compact object wind-fed by a Wolf-Rayet (WR) star, but the masses of the components and the mass-loss rate have been…
We identified a new X-ray transient CXOM31 004252.457+411631.17 (T13) in M31 during a 2013 June Chandra observation. This system is particularly exciting because it is located within 100" of M31*; it is thought that this region of the bulge…
Recent observations of the high-mass X-ray binary Cygnus X-1 have shown that both the companion star (41 solar masses) and the black hole (21 solar masses) are more massive than previously estimated. Furthermore, the black hole appears to…