Related papers: A variable ULX and possible IMBH candidate in M51a

The ultra-luminous X-ray (ULX) source ESO 243-49 HLX-1 currently provides the strongest evidence for the existence of intermediate mass black holes. We conduct an ongoing monitoring campaign with the Swift X-ray Telescope and found that…

Gravitational waves from the binary black hole (BH) merger GW150914 may enlighten our understanding of ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULXs), as BHs>30Msun can reach luminosities>4x10^39 erg s^-1 without exceeding their Eddington limit. It is…

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…

The notion of source states characterizing the X-ray emission from black hole binaries has revealed to be a very useful tool to disentangle the complex spectral and aperiodic phenomenology displayed by those classes of accreting objects. We…

We present a detailed analysis of XMM archival data of two Ultraluminous X-ray Sources (ULXs) in the nearby spiral galaxy NGC 1313: NGC 1313 X-1 and X-2. The spectral continuum of these sources was modeled with a soft thermal component plus…

Two recent observations of the nearby galaxy NGC 6946 with NuSTAR, one simultaneous with an XMM-Newton observation, provide an opportunity to examine its population of bright accreting sources from a broadband perspective. We study the…

Ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULXs) with apparent luminosities up to 100's of times the Eddington luminosity for a neutron star have been discovered in external galaxies. The existence of intermediate mass black holes has been proposed to…

We report the results of a 2019-2021 monitoring campaign with Swift and associated target-of-opportunity observations with XMM-Newton and NuSTAR, examining the spectral and timing behavior of the highly variable ultraluminous X-ray source…

Ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULXs) are high-mass X-ray binaries with an X-ray luminosity above $10^{39}$ erg s$^{-1}$. These ULXs can be powered by black holes that are more massive than $20M_\odot$, accreting in a standard regime, or…

NGC 55 ULX1 is a bright Ultraluminous X-ray source located 1.78 Mpc away. We analysed a sample of 20 Swift observations, taken between 2013 April and August, and two Chandra observations taken in 2001 September and 2004 June. We found only…

We present results from our studies of radio emission from selected Ultraluminous X-ray (ULX) sources, using archival Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) data and new European VLBI Network (EVN) observations. The GMRT data are used to…

Evidence is mounting that some Ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULXs) may contain accreting intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs). We review the current observational evidence for IMBH-ULXs. While low-luminosity ULXs with L_X <~ 10^39.5 erg/s…

The origin of the variable X-ray emission in the $(0.3-30)\,$keV energy range of ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) remains unclear, making it difficult to constrain the mass of the central compact object. X-ray luminosities of bright ULXs…

This paper presents a comprehensive X-ray and multi-wavelength study of ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) in NGC 1566 using archival Chandra, Swift/XRT, James Webb Space Telescope, JWST, and Hubble Space Telescope, HST observations. The…

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…

Using Chandra observations we have identified a sample of seven off-nuclear X-ray sources, in the redshift range z=0.072-0.283, located within optically bright galaxies in the COSMOS Survey. Using the multi-wavelength coverage available in…

Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULX) are off-nuclear point sources in nearby galaxies whose X-ray luminosity exceeds the theoretical maximum for spherical infall (the Eddington limit) onto stellar-mass black holes. Their luminosity ranges from…

In recent work with high-resolution grating spectrometers (RGS) aboard XMM-Newton Pinto et al. (2016) have discovered that two bright and archetypal ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) have strong relativistic winds in agreement with…

Ultra-/hyper-luminous X-ray sources (ULX/HLX) could be interesting laboratories to improve our understanding of the supermassive black hole growth through super-Eddington accretion episodes and successive mergers of lighter holes. ULXs are…

We report the discovery of a new ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX) in the nearby galaxy NGC 4244 from Chandra archival data. The source, 1WGAJ1216.9+3743, is one of the least luminous and softest ULXs discovered so far. Its X-ray spectrum is…