Related papers: Can nebular HeII emission be explained by ultra-lu…
The high mass X-ray binaries (HMXBs) provide an exciting framework to investigate the evolution of massive stars and the processes behind binary evolution. HMXBs have shown to be good tracers of recent star formation in galaxies and might…
High-energy emission associated with star formation has been proposed as a significant source of interstellar medium (ISM) ionization in low-metallicity starbursts and an important contributor to the heating of the intergalactic medium…
Nitrogen is produced by CNO-cycling in massive stars, and can be ejected in significant amounts in supernova explosions. While in H-rich SNe, its [\ion{N}{II}] 6548, 6583 emission becomes obscured by strong H$\alpha$, in explosions of He…
The ionizing photon production efficiency, $\xi_{ion}$, is a critical parameter that provides a number of physical constraints to the nature of the early Universe, including the contribution of galaxies to the timely completion of the…
With the discovery of pulsations in some of the ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULXs), it is quite clear that most of the ULXs harbor either a neutron star or a stellar mass black hole as a compact object accreting at super-Eddington rates.…
(Abridge) Near-infrared spectroscopy is used to study the kinematics and excitation mechanisms of the H2 and [FeII] gas in a sample of AGN. The H2 lines are unresolved in all objects in which they were detected while the [FeII] lines have…
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…
We have used extensive libraries of model and empirical galaxy spectra (assembled respectively from the population synthesis code of Bruzual and Charlot and the fourth data release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey) to interpret some puzzling…
Recent models of the formation of ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULXs) predict that they preferentially form in low-metallicity environments. We look at the metallicity of the nebula surrounding NGC 1313 X-2, one of the best-studied ULXs.…
Massive metal-poor stars might form massive stellar black holes (BHs), with mass 25<=mBH/Msun<=80, via direct collapse. We derive the number of massive BHs (NBH) that are expected to form per galaxy through this mechanism. Such massive BHs…
A significant fraction of ultraluminous X-ray sources appear to be embedded in observable ionized nebulae that take the form of large, several 100 pc diameter interstellar bubbles. Here we review optical observations of these bubbles, their…
The aim of this work is to identify HeII emitters at 2<z<4.6 and to constrain the source of the hard ionizing continuum that powers the HeII emission. We have assembled a sample of 277 galaxies with a high quality spectroscopic redshift at…
Elliptical galaxies are generally luminous sources of X-ray radiation, and contain large amounts of hot, interstellar gas. In the brighter X-ray galaxies, the inferred masses of hot gas are consistent with those expected given the present…
We present multi-component photoionization models allowing for local density inhomogeneities in the NLR to interpret the emission line spectra of Seyfert 2 galaxies. This approach leads to a successful match of a large set of line…
A major prediction of most super-Eddington accretion theories is the presence of anisotropic emission from supercritical disks, but the degree of anisotropy and its dependency with energy remain poorly constrained observationally. A key…
We study the expected properties of starbursts in order to provide the point of reference for interpretation of high-z galaxy surveys and of very metal-poor galaxies. We concentrate mainly on the UV characteristics such as the ionizing…
Strong nebular emission lines are a sensitive probe of star formation and extinction in galaxies, and the [O II] line detects star forming populations out to z>1. However, star formation rates from emission lines depend on calibration of…
We present some results from an archival VLA study of ultraluminous X-ray source s (ULXs). These unresolved non-nuclear X-ray sources have luminosities (L_X >= 1 0^39 ergs/sec) which may require somewhat exotic explanations, such as…
The X-ray colors and X-ray-to-optical luminosity ratios (L_X/L_B) of 61 early- type galaxies observed with the ROSAT PSPC are determined. The colors indicate that the X-ray spectral properties of galaxies vary as a function of L_X/L_B. The…
We present Spitzer Infrared Spectrograph (IRS) observations of the ultra-luminous X-ray source (ULX) NGC 6946 X-1 and its associated nebula MF 16. This ULX has very similar properties to the famous Holmberg II ULX, the first ULX to show a…