Related papers: An extreme Ultraluminous X-ray source X-1 in NGC 5…
We obtained optical spectra of the counterpart of the ultraluminous X-ray source NGC 5408 X-1 using the FORS spectrograph on the VLT. The spectra show strong high excitation emission lines, He{\sc ii} $\lambda$4686 and [Ne{\sc V}]…
We report the discovery of the transient ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX) CXOU J122602.3+125951 (hereafter M86 tULX-1), located 3'52" (19 kpc) northwest of the centre of the giant elliptical galaxy M86 (NGC 4406) in the Virgo Cluster. The…
Ultraluminous and hyperluminous X-ray sources (ULXs and HLXs) are among the brightest astrophysical objects in the X-ray sky. While ULXs most likely host stellar-mass compact objects accreting at super-Eddington rates, HLXs are compelling…
Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) with luminosities lying between ~3x10^{39} - 2x10^{40} erg/s represent a contentious sample of objects as their brightness, together with a lack of unambiguous mass estimates for the vast majority of the…
Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) have been described variously as the most luminous normal X-ray binaries, as hypernovae, and as "intermediate-mass" black holes with masses of hundreds to thousands of solar masses. We present results on…
Ultra-luminous Compact X-ray Sources (ULXs) in nearby spiral galaxies and Galactic superluminal jet sources share the common spectral characteristic that they have unusually high disk temperatures which cannot be explained in the framework…
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…
Most ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) display a typical set of properties not seen in Galactic stellar-mass black holes (BHs): higher luminosity Lx > 3 10^39 erg/s, unusually soft X-ray components (kT < 0.3 keV) and a characteristic…
Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) are enigmatic sources first discovered in the 1980s in external galaxies. They are characterized by their extraordinarily high X-ray luminosity, which often exceeds $10^{40}\, \rm{erg \; s^{-1}}$. Our…
We present a comprehensive analysis of 475 ks (438 ks unpublished & 37 ks archival) XMM-Newton/EPIC-pn observation of a nearby, highly inclined, star-forming, luminous infrared galaxy NGC 3221 through spatial, temporal, and spectral…
The closest known ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX), M33 X-8, has been recently observed with NuSTAR during its Extragalactic Legacy program, which includes a hard X-ray survey of the M33 galaxy. We present results of two long observations…
Ultra-luminous X-Ray sources are extra-nuclear point sources in external galaxies with $L_X=10^{39}$--$10^{41}$ erg/s and are among the most poorly understood X-ray sources. To help understand their nature, we are trying to identify their…
We examine the X-ray spectra and variability of the sample of X-ray sources with L_X = 10^{31}-10^{33} erg s^{-1} identified within the inner 9' of the Galaxy. Very few of the sources exhibit intra-day or inter-month variations. We find…
NGC 1313 X-2 is one of the few known pulsating ultraluminous X-ray sources (PULXs), and so is thought to contain a neutron star that accretes at highly super-Eddington rates. However, the physics of this accretion remains to be determined.…
We have discovered an ultrasoft X-ray transient source, 2XMMi J184725.1-631724, which was detected serendipitously in two XMM-Newton observations in the direction of the center of the galaxy IC 4765-f01-1504 at a redshift of 0.0353. These…
We report on the serendipitous discovery of a new transient in NGC 5907, at a peak luminosity of 6.4x10^{39} erg/s. The source was undetected in previous 2012 Chandra observations with a 3 sigma upper limit on the luminosity of 1.5x10^{38}…
A Chandra ACIS-S imaging observation of the nearby galaxy M81 (NGC 3031) reveals 9 luminous soft X-ray sources. The local environments, X-ray spectral properties, and X-ray light curves of the sources are presented and discussed in the…
We present observations with XMM-Newton of M33 X-8, the ultraluminous X-ray source (L_{0.5-10 keV} ~ 2x10^39 erg/s) closest to the centre of the galaxy. The best-fit model is similar to the typical model of Galactic black holes in very high…
We present results for two Ultraluminous X-ray Sources (ULXs), IC 342 X-1 and IC 342 X-2, using two epochs of XMM-Newton and NuSTAR observations separated by $\sim$7 days. We observe little spectral or flux variability above 1 keV between…
The nature of ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) -- off-nuclear extra-galactic sources with luminosity, assumed isotropic, $\gtrsim 10^{39}$ erg s$^{-1}$ -- is still debated. One possibility is that ULXs are stellar black holes accreting…