Chandra Observations of Off-Nuclear Sources within Circinus

Details Chandra Observations of Off-Nuclear Sources within Circinus Chandra Observations of Off-Nuclear Sources within Circinus

Dec 2000

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2000aas...197.8005b&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, 197th AAS Meeting, #80.05; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 32, p.1536

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

1

Scientific paper

We present results for the nearby Seyfert 2 galaxy Circinus from the zeroth-order imaging of a Chandra HETGS observation. In particular, we report on the off-nuclear sources detected in the ACIS-S image of the galaxy. We find that many of these serendipitous X-ray sources lie along the disk of the galaxy, but that none have optical counterparts on an archival HST WFPC2 F606W image to within 4" of their X-ray positions, down to a limiting magnitude of V ~25. Their implied X-ray-to-optical flux ratios, fx}/f{V >= 15.8, are larger than those typically found for stars, normal galaxies, or AGN. At the distance of Circinus (4 Mpc), their intrinsic 0.5-8 keV luminosities range from 1037 erg s-1 to several times 1039 erg s-1. Nearly half of the off-nuclear X-ray sources exhibit short term flux variability on the order of 1-3 hours. One source in particular demonstrates flux variability that is both periodic and extreme (P ≈ 7.5 hours, L 0.5-8\ keV ≈ 0 - 6*E39 erg s-1), making it one of the most luminous eclipsing X-ray binaries known. These properties suggest that the likely origins for the off-nuclear X-ray sources are X-ray binaries and/or ultra-luminous SNRs.

Affiliated with

Also associated with

No associations

Rating

Chandra Observations of Off-Nuclear Sources within Circinus does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with Chandra Observations of Off-Nuclear Sources within Circinus, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Chandra Observations of Off-Nuclear Sources within Circinus will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

Comments { 0 }

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-1726395