Related papers: Exploring the Nature of the Brightest Hyper-lumino…

Nearby galaxies host ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULXs), whose nature remains largely unknown. Until the discovery of the first ULX pulsar, M82 X-2, the mechanism powering the large luminosities of most ULXs was thought to be…

Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) with X-ray luminosities larger than the Eddington luminosity of stellar mass objects may be powered by intermediate mass black holes (IBHs) of masses Mbh~10^3Msun. If IBHs form in young dense stellar…

This paper reviews some of the recent observational results on stellar mass black hole candidates. Over the last decade, much of the progress in this field has been achieved through the study of transient X--ray binary sources which shine…

Ultra-luminous X-Ray Objects are off-nucleus point sources with $L_X=10^{39}$-$10^{41}$ erg/s but the nature of such systems are largely unidentified. Here we report a 2.1 hour period observed in a Chandra ACIS observation for ULX M51 X-7,…

Following a serendipitous detection with the NuSTAR observatory, we present a multi-epoch spectral and temporal analysis of an extreme ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX) located in the outskirts of the Circinus galaxy, hereafter Circinus…

The emission-line dwarf galaxy NGC 3413 is known to host a bright X-ray source near its optical center. The 0.3-10 keV luminosity of this source is estimated to be approximately 10$^{39}$ erg$s^{-1}$ potentially qualifying it as an…

Despite much observational and theoretical effort little is presently known about the nature of the luminous non-nuclear X-ray sources which appear to largely surpass the Eddington limit of a few solar masses. Here we present first results…

Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) have captivated researchers for decades due to their exceptionally high luminosities and unique spectral characteristics. Some of these sources defy expectations by exhibiting super-Eddington luminosities…

Building upon three late-type galaxies in the Virgo cluster with both a predicted black hole mass of less than $\sim$10$^5$ M$_{\odot}$ and a centrally-located X-ray point-source, we reveal 11 more such galaxies, more than tripling the…

We present the current results of an investigation into M51 ULX-7, using archival data from XMM-Newton, Chandra and NuSTAR, and optical and radio data from HST and VLA. The source has a consistently hard power-law X-ray spectrum and high…

Studies were made of ASCA spectra of seven ultra-luminous compact X-ray sources (ULXs) in nearby spiral galaxies; M33 X-8 (Takano et al. 1994), M81 X-6 (Fabbiano 1988b; Kohmura et al. 1994; Uno 1997), IC 342 Source 1 (Okada et al. 1998),…

We present optical observations of an ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX) in Holmberg IX, a dwarf galaxy near M81. The ULX has an average X-ray luminosity of some 10^{40} erg/s. It is located in a huge (400pc x 300pc) ionized nebula being much…

We have searched for ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) in a sample of 28 elliptical and S0 galaxies observed with Chandra. We find that the number of X-ray sources detected at a flux level that would correspond to a 0.3-10 keV X-ray…

We have conducted Chandra observations of ~2560 square arcmin (~131 kpc^2) of of M31, and find that the most luminous X-ray sources in our fields are in globular clusters (GCs). Of the 28 GC X-ray sources in our fields, 17 are newly…

Little is known about the properties of the accretion flows and jets of the lowest-luminosity quiescent black holes. We report new, strictly simultaneous radio and X-ray observations of the nearby stellar-mass black hole X-ray binary GS…

We study a sample of $\sim$50,000 dwarf starburst and late-type galaxies drawn from the COSMOS survey with the aim of investigating the presence of nuclear accreting black holes (BHs) as those seed BHs from which supermassive BHs could grow…

We present a multi-wavelenght study of the recently discovered Ultraluminous X-ray transient XMMUJ004243.6+412519 (ULX2 hereafter) in M31, based on Swift data and the 1.8-m Copernico Telescope in Asiago (Italy). Undetected until January…

Recent Chandra and XMM-Newton surveys have confirmed that the cosmic X-ray background is mostly due to accretion onto super-massive black holes, integrated over cosmic time. Here we review the results obtained from the photometric and…

We report on the discovery of a new, transient ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX) in the galaxy NGC 7090. This new ULX, which we refer to as NGC 7090 ULX3, was discovered via monitoring with $Swift$ during 2019-20, and to date has exhibited a…

After showing four outbursts spaced by $\sim 1$ year from 2009 to 2012, the hyper luminous X-ray source ESO 243-49 HLX-1, currently the best intermediate mass black hole (IMBH) candidate, showed an outburst in 2013 delayed by more than a…