The Mass of the Ultraluminous X-Ray Sources in Galaxies

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics

Scientific paper

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Scientific paper

The ultraluminous X-ray sources (also, IXO) are the most luminous non-nuclear sources in galaxies (10^39-10^40 erg/s) and may be intermediate mass black holes (10^3-10^4 Msolar). To search for their optical counterparts, we combined high-resolution X-ray imaging from Chandra with WFPC images from HST. We have identified the optical counterparts to IXOs in M81 and M51 and improve the previous optical identification in NGC 2403. These optical counterparts are generally blue stars, indicating moderately high mass young secondaries (O and B stars). Also, these stars often lie close to star-forming regions, consistent with them being young objects. One of our sources shows a period a little longer than two hours, and this helps to constrain the mass of the primary, which we discuss.

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