Related papers: HLX-1 may be an SS433 system

We studied the outburst properties of the hyper-luminous X-ray source ESO 243-49 HLX-1, using the full set of Swift monitoring observations. We quantified the increase in the waiting time, recurrence time, and e-folding rise timescale along…

The disk instability picture gives a plausible explanation for the behavior of soft X-ray transient systems if self-irradiation of the disk is included. We show that there is a simple relation between the peak luminosity (at the start of an…

In this proof-of-concept study we demonstrate that in a binary system mass can be transferred toward an accreting compact object at extremely high rate. If the transferred mass is efficiently converted to X-ray luminosity (with disregard of…

Most ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) are thought to be supercritical accreting compact objects, where massive outflows are inevitable. Using the long-term monitoring data with the Swift X-ray Telescope, we identified a common feature in…

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…

We report our analysis of X-ray data on M101 ULX-1, concentrating on high state Chandra and XMM-Newton observations. We find that the high state of M101 ULX-1 may have a preferred recurrence timescale. If so, the underlying clock may have…

We evaluate the emission that must arise due to reflection of the putative collimated X-ray radiation of SS 433 by atomic gas and molecular clouds in the Galactic plane and compare the predicted signal with existing RXTE and ASCA data for…

Various arguments strongly suggest that the population of ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs: apparent X-ray luminosity > Eddington limit for 10 Msun ~10^39 erg/s) in nearby galaxies are mostly stellar-mass X-ray binaries in unusual…

We present RXTE observations of the eclipsing X-ray binary Hercules X-1 conducted during an anomalous low state. Data reduction reveals a light curve over 2.7 orbital cycles remarkably similar to optical and UV light curves which are…

For a long time, the well-known supercritically accreting binary SS433 is being proposed as a prototype for a class of hypothetical bright X-ray sources that may be identified with the so-called Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) in nearby…

The long-term Swift monitoring of ESO 243-49 HLX-1 provides an opportunity to investigate the detailed timing and spectral behaviour of this hyper-luminous X-ray source. Swift has detected 7 outbursts since 2009 mid-August. Using different…

We present the discovery and interpretation of ionized nebulae around two ultraluminous X-ray sources in M 51; both sources share the rare property of showing X-ray eclipses by their companion stars, and are therefore prime targets for…

With Very Large Telescope (VLT) Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) observations, we detected highly variable helium emission lines from the optical counterpart of the supersoft ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX) NGC 247 ULX-1. No Balmer…

The brightest ultraluminous X-ray source currently known, HLX-1, has been observed to undergo five outburst cycles. The periodicity of these outbursts, and their high inferred maximum accretion rates of $\sim{\rm few}\times 10^{-4} M_\odot…

We present the identification and characterization of the optical counterpart to 2XMM J011942.7+032421, one of the most luminous and distant ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULXs). The counterpart is located near a star forming region in a…

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,…

Using archival Hubble Space Telescope (HST) imaging data, we report the multiband photometric properties of 13 ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) that have a unique compact optical counterpart. Both magnitude and color variation are…

We present Chandra and HST observations of the ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX) IC 342 X-1. The Chandra and HST images are aligned using two X-ray emitting foreground stars. The astrometry corrected position for X-1 is R.A. = 03h45m55.61s,…

We present a freely available xspec model for the modulations seen in the long-term light curves of multiple ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs). By incorporating the physics of multiple electron scatterings (ray traced with a Monte-Carlo…

NGC 925 ULX-1 and ULX-2 are two ultraluminous X-ray sources in the galaxy NGC 925, at a distance of 8.5 Mpc. For the first time, we analyzed high quality, simultaneous XMM-Newton and NuSTAR data of both sources. Although at a first glance…