Related papers: Hyperluminous Supersoft X-Ray Sources in the Chand…

Black holes at the centre of quiescent galaxies can be switched on when they accrete gas that is gained from stellar tidal disruptions. A star approaching a black hole on a low angular momentum orbit may be ripped apart by tidal forces,…

X-ray transients on sub-observation timescales represent a diverse and underexplored class of astrophysical phenomena, from stellar flares and magnetar bursts to extragalactic fast transients and supernova shock breakouts. We present a…

We report the serendipitous discovery of a bright point source flare in the Abell cluster 1795 with archival EUVE and Chandra observations. Assuming the EUVE emission is associated with the Chandra source, the X-ray 0.5-7 keV flux declined…

Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) are bright extragalactic sources with X-ray luminosities above 10^39 erg/s powered by accretion onto compact objects. According to the first studies performed with XMM-Newton ULXs seemed to be excellent…

Despite the 30-year history of ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULXs) studies, issues like the majority of their physical natures (i.e., neutron stars, stellar-mass black holes, or intermediate black holes) as well as the accretion mechanisms…

X-ray transience is the most extreme form of variability observed in AGN or normal non-active galaxies. While factors of 2-3 on timescales of days to years are quite common among AGN, X-ray transients appear only once and vanish from the…

The observations and theory of the exciting new class of galactic black hole X-ray transients is reviewed. Seven of these systems have measured mass functions or mass estimates in excess of stable neutron stars, making them excellent black…

Deep X-ray surveys have shown that the cosmic X-ray background (XRB) is largely due to the accretion onto supermassive black holes, integrated over the cosmic time. These surveys have resolved more than 80% of the 0.1-10 keV X-ray…

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…

Most ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) are believed to be stellar mass black holes or neutron stars accreting beyond the Eddington limit. Determining the nature of the compact object and the accretion mode from broadband spectroscopy is…

Analysis of recent Chandra observations of the elliptical galaxies NGC 4472 and NGC 4649 has revealed faint soft X-ray sources at their centers. The sources are located to within 1'' of the optical centers of the galaxies. They are most…

XMM-Newton and Chandra have ushered in a new era for the study of dwarf galaxies in the Local Group. We provide an overview of the opportunities, challenges, and some early results. The large number of background sources relative to galaxy…

The more than 80 nearby galaxies imaged with the Chandra Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer have been analyzed in a search for Ultra-Luminous X-ray (ULX) sources. The sample of galaxies span the range of Hubble morphological types and…

Large-amplitude, high-luminosity soft X-ray flares were detected by the ROSAT All-Sky Survey in several galaxies with no evidence of Seyfert activity in their ground-based optical spectra. These flares had the properties predicted for a…

We report the discovery of an off-nuclear ultrasoft hyper-luminous X-ray source candidate 3XMM J141711.1+522541 in the inactive S0 galaxy SDSS J141711.07+522540.8 (z=0.41827, d_L=2.3 Gpc) in the Extended Groth Strip. It is located at a…

We present the results from an X-ray and optical study of a new sample of eight extreme luminosity ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX) candidates, which were selected as the brightest ULXs (with L_X > 5x10^40 erg/s) located within 100 Mpc…

Over the past 13 years, the Chandra X-ray Observatory's ability to provide high resolution X-ray images and spectra have established it as one of the most versatile and powerful tools for astrophysical research in the 21st century. Chandra…

The regions around massive black holes can show X-ray variability on timescales from seconds to decades. Observing many black holes over different timescales can enhance our chances of detecting variability coming from (partial) tidal…

We have re-examined the most luminous X-ray sources in the starburst galaxy NGC 4631, using XMM-Newton, Chandra and ROSAT data. The most interesting source is a highly variable supersoft ULX. We suggest that its bolometric luminosity ~ a…

The automatic classification of X-ray detections is a necessary step in extracting astrophysical information from compiled catalogs of astrophysical sources. Classification is useful for the study of individual objects, statistics for…