Related papers: Identification of a Helium Donor Star in NGC 247 U…
Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) are non-nuclear point-like objects observed with extremely high X-ray luminosity that exceeds the Eddington limit of a $\rm10\,M_\odot$ black hole. A fraction of ULXs has been confirmed to contain neutron…
It was recently proposed that a significant fraction of ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) actually host a neutron star (NS) accretor. We have performed a systematic study on the NS ULX population in Milky Way-like galaxies, by combining…
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…
Variability is a powerful tool to investigate properties of X-ray binaries (XRB), in particular for Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) that are mainly detected in the X-ray band. For most ULXs the nature of the accretor is unknown, although…
In this study, we examine the properties of donor stars of the three recently discovered ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) powered by rotating neutron stars. For this purpose, we constructed a theoretical relation between the X-ray…
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…
We obtained 3 epochs of simultaneous Hubble Space Telescope (HST)/Wide Field Camera 3 and Chandra observations of the ultraluminous X-ray source NGC 5408 X-1. The counterpart of the X-ray source is seen in all HST filters, from the UV…
We report on multiwavelength observations of the supersoft ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX) in NGC 247 made with the Chandra X-ray Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope (HST). We aligned the X-ray and optical images using three objects…
We present the optical and X-ray study of the ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX) NGC 5474 X-1. The X-ray spectrum taken during the bright state of the source ($L_X \sim 2\times10^{40}$ egs/s) shows signatures of a broad absorption line at…
Ultraluminous supersoft X-ray sources (ULSs) exhibit supersoft X-ray spectra with blackbody temperatures below 0.1 keV and bolometric luminosities above 10$^{39}$ ergs s$^{-1}$. In this Letter, we report the first optical spectroscopic…
X-ray data provide insights into accretion processes and the compact objects of ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs), while optical and infrared (IR) observations help identify the donor star and surrounding environment. Together, these…
We have obtained near-simultaneous Swift/XRT imaging and Gemini GMOS spectroscopy for the ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX) NGC~300 ULX-1 (formerly designated SN~2010da). The observed X-ray emission is consistent with an inhomogeneous wind…
The end points of massive star evolution are poorly known, especially those in interacting binary systems containing compact objects, such as neutron stars or black holes. Such systems are bright in X-rays, and the most luminous among them…
Optical studies of ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULX) in nearby galaxies have turned out to be instrumental in discriminating between various models including the much advertised intermediate mass black hole hypothesis and various beaming…
We report on a new XMM-Newton observation of NGC 247 from December 2009. The galaxy contains a supersoft, ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX) whose spectrum consists of a thermal component with a temperature about 0.1 keV and a power-law tail…
We report on our search for the optical counterparts of two ultraluminous X-ray pulsars with known orbital periods, M82 X-2 and NGC 5907 X-1, in new and archival HST observations, in an effort to characterize the donor stars in these…
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…
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…
Since their discovery, Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) have attracted attention due to their combination of extreme luminosities and extra-nuclear locations. However, they are a fairly rare phenomenon, and attempts to investigate the…
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…