Chandra Observation of NGC 1559: Eight Ultraluminous X-Ray Sources Including a Compact Binary Candidate

Despite the 30 yr history of ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) studies, issues such as the majority of their physical natures (i.e., neutron stars, stellar-mass black holes, or intermediate black holes) as well as the accretion mechanisms are still under debate. Expanding the ULX sample size in the...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Chen-Hsun Ma, Kwan-Lok Li, You-Hua Chu, Albert K. H. Kong
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IOP Publishing 2023-01-01
Series:The Astrophysical Journal
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Online Access:https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/aced04
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Summary:Despite the 30 yr history of ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) studies, issues such as the majority of their physical natures (i.e., neutron stars, stellar-mass black holes, or intermediate black holes) as well as the accretion mechanisms are still under debate. Expanding the ULX sample size in the literature is clearly a way to help. To this end, we investigated the X-ray source population, ULXs in particular, in the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1559 using a Chandra observation made in 2016. In this 45 ks exposure, 33 X-ray point sources were detected within the 2.′7 isophotal radius of the galaxy. Among them, eight ULXs were identified with the criterion of the X-ray luminosity L _x > 10 ^39 erg s ^−1 (0.3–7 keV). Both X-ray light curves and spectra of all the sources were examined. Except for some low-count spectra that only provide ambiguous spectral fitting results, all the X-ray sources were basically spectrally hard and therefore likely have nonthermal origins. While no strong X-ray variability was present in most of the sources owing to the relatively short exposure of the observation, we found an intriguing ULX, named X-24, exhibiting a periodicity of ∼7500 s with a detection significance of 2.7 σ . We speculate that it is the orbital period of the system. Roche-lobe overflow and Roche limit are consistent with the speculation. Thus, we suggest that X-24 may be one of the rare compact binary ULXs, and hence, a good candidate as a stellar-mass black hole.
ISSN:1538-4357