Related papers: Persistent and Transient Blank Field Sources
The project Massive Unseen Companions to Hot Faint Underluminous Stars from SDSS (MUCHFUSS) aims at finding hot subdwarf stars with massive compact companions like massive white dwarfs (M > 1.0 Msun), neutron stars or stellar mass black…
Old isolated accreting neutron stars may show up among unidentified soft X--ray sources detected by the ROSAT All Sky Survey. We argue that the chances of identification are greater for ONSs located in the closest overdense regions of the…
In these brief lecture notes, we introduce sterile neutrinos as dark matter candidates. We discuss in particular their production via oscillations, their radiative decay, as well as possible observational signatures and constraints.
Discovery and characterisation of black holes (BHs), neutron stars (NSs), and white dwarfs (WDs) with detached luminous companions (LCs) in wide orbits are exciting because they are important test beds for dark remnant (DR) formation…
Integral-field spectroscopy in the near-infrared (NIR) is a powerful tool to analyze the gaseous and stellar distributions and kinematics, as well as the excitation mechanisms in the centers of galaxies. The unique combination of NIR and…
The X-ray dim isolated neutron stars (XDINSs) are peculiar pulsar-like objects, characterized by their very well Planck-like spectrum. In studying their spectral energy distributions, the optical/UV excess is a long standing problem.…
The Second Swift-XRT Point Source catalogue offers a combination of sky coverage and sensitivity and presents an invaluable opportunity for transient discovery. We search the catalogue at the positions of inactive and active galaxies, and…
This review summarizes the observational constraints on the mass spectrum of compact objects in X-ray binaries. We currently have 20 X-ray binaries with confirmed black holes, based on dynamical information (i.e. mass in excess of 3 Msun).…
We present a short overview of the properties of faint Galactic X-ray binaries. We place emphasis on current classification scenarios. One of the important parameters for the faint sources is their intrinsic luminosity. In the case of…
I review the results of radio and X-ray searches for pulsations from young neutron stars, emphasizing work accomplished in the last five years. I cover undirected searches, as well as directed searches of pulsar wind nebulae, EGRET…
Very faint X-ray transients (VFXTs) are a group of X-ray binaries with low luminosities, the peak X-ray luminosities during their outbursts being only 10$^{34}$--10$^{36}$ erg\,s$^{-1}$. Using the $\gamma$-ray data obtained with the Large…
Binary systems containing a compact object may exhibit periodic brightening episodes due to gravitational lensing as the compact object transits the companion star. Such ``self-lensing'' signatures have been detected before for white dwarf…
Binary systems have long been recognized as the source of powerful astrophysical diagnostics. Among the many applications of binary stars, they have been used as probes of stellar structure and evolution (both of single and binary stars) in…
Situation with highly magnetized neutron stars in binary systems is not yet certain. On the one hand, all best studied magnetars seem to be isolated objects. On the other, there are many claims based on model-dependent analysis of spin…
The basic observed properties of neutron stars are reviewed. I suggest that neutron stars in low-mass X-ray binaries are the best of all known sites for testing strong-field effects of general relativity.
The study of sterile neutrinos has recently acquired a different flavor: being now excluded as the dominant solution for the solar or atmospheric conversions, sterile neutrinos, still attractive for many other reasons, have thus become even…
X-ray observations have unveiled the existence of a family of radio-quiet Isolated Neutron Stars whose X-ray emission is purely thermal, hence dubbed X-ray Dim Isolated Neutron Stars (XDINSs). While optical observations have allowed to…
HERMES (High Energy Rapid Modular Ensemble of Satellites) pathfinder is an in-orbit demonstration consisting of a constellation of six 3U nano-satellites hosting simple but innovative detectors for the monitoring of cosmic high-energy…
We searched for radio pulsations from the potential neutron star binary companions to subdwarf B stars HE 0532-4503, HE 0929-0424, TON S 183 and PG 1232-136. Optical spectroscopy of these subdwarfs has indicated they orbit a companion in…
We briefly describe the main features of the Brera Multi-Wavelet (BMW) survey of serendipitous X-ray clusters, based on the still unexploited ROSAT-HRI archival observations. Cluster candidates are selected from the general BMW catalogue of…