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Three Liners under the Chandra X-ray Microscope
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Eracleous, Michael Shields, Joseph C. Chartas, George Moran, Edward C. |
| Copyright Year | 2001 |
| Abstract | We use observations of three galaxies hosting low-ionization nuclear emission-line regions (LINERs; NGC 404, NGC 4736, and NGC 4579) with the Chandra X-ray Observatory to study their power sources. We find very diverse properties within this small group: NGC 404 has an X-ray-faint nucleus with a soft, thermal spectrum, NGC 4736 harbors a plethora of discrete X-ray sources in and around its nucleus, and NGC 4579 has a dominant nuclear point source embedded in a very extended, diffuse nebulosity. From their multi-wavelength properties we conclude the following about the power sources in these LINERs: the nucleus of NGC 404 is the site of a weak, compact starburst, whose X-ray emission is due to gas heated by stellar winds and supernovae, NGC 4736 appears to be in a recent or aging starburst phase, where the X-ray emission is dominated by a dense cluster of X-ray binaries, and NGC 4579 is powered by accretion onto a supermassive black hole. We detect 39 discrete sources in NGC 4736 and 21 in NGC 4579, most with LX > 10 37 erg s. One source in the disk of NGC 4579 appears to be an ultraluminous X-ray binary with LX(2 − 10 keV) = 9 × 10 erg s, but it could also be a background quasar. The most luminous discrete sources have simple power-law spectra, which along with their luminosities suggest that these are X-ray binaries accreting near or above the Eddington rate for a neutron star. By comparing the luminosity functions of discrete X-ray sources in these and other galaxies we find a potential connection between the age of the stellar population and the slope of the cumulative X-ray source luminosity function: galaxies with primarily old stellar populations have steeper luminosity functions than starburst galaxies. We suggest that this difference results from the contribution of high-mass X-ray binaries from the young stellar population to the upper end of the luminosity function. Subject headings: galaxies: active – galaxies: nuclei – X-rays: galaxies – X-rays: binaries |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0109246v1.pdf |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://cds.cern.ch/record/519916/files/0109246.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Subject Keyword | Active galactic nucleus Black Hole Cell Nucleus Diagnostic radiologic examination Electric Power Supplies Embedded system Embedding Environmental Wind GUCY2C protein, human Galaxy Kiloelectronvolt Luminous Studio Medical Subject Headings Microscope Device Component Neutrons New General Catalogue Numerous Plain x-ray Population Power (Psychology) Rajiformes Stellar (payment network) X-Ray (Amazon Kindle) wavelength |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
