Optical Observations Of Ultraluminous Supersoft X-ray Sources

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy

Scientific paper

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Scientific paper

Luminous supersoft X-ray sources found in the Milky Way and Magellanic Clouds are likely white dwarfs that steadily or cyclically burn accreted matter on their surface, which are promising type Ia supernova progenitors. Observations of distant galaxies with Chandra and XMM-Newton have revealed supersoft sources that are generally hotter and more luminous, including some ultraluminous supersoft sources (ULSs) that are either massive white dwarfs or intermediate mass black holes of a few thousand solar masses. While the two models give similar spectra in the X-ray, they give quite different spectra at lower energies because of the different behaviors of the accretion disks. Such difference can be revealed by the observations in the optical and infrared. We report on our HST studies of M81-ULS1, an ultraluminous supersoft source in the spiral galaxy M81, and show how the existing observations actually favor the intermediate mass black hole model against the massive white dwarf model.

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