CHANDRA OBSERVATIONS OF THE ANTENNAE GALAXIES ( NGC4038/39): II. DETECTION AND ANALYSIS OF GALAXIAN X-RAY SOURCES. Zezas, A., Fabbiano, G., Rots, A., H., & Murray, S., S. The Astrophysical Journal, 142:239-260, 2002.
CHANDRA OBSERVATIONS OF THE ANTENNAE GALAXIES ( NGC4038/39): II. DETECTION AND ANALYSIS OF GALAXIAN X-RAY SOURCES [pdf]Paper  CHANDRA OBSERVATIONS OF THE ANTENNAE GALAXIES ( NGC4038/39): II. DETECTION AND ANALYSIS OF GALAXIAN X-RAY SOURCES [pdf]Website  abstract   bibtex   
We report the detailed analysis of the X-ray properties of the discrete sources detected in a long (72 ks) Chandra ACIS-S observation of the Antennae galaxies. We detect 49 sources, down to a detection limit of ∼ 10 38 erg s −1 ; 18 sources have L X > 10 39 erg s −1 (Ultra Luminous X-ray sources; ULXs). Six of the 49 sources have an extended component. Two sources show evidence for variability during this observation, and three sources exhibit long term variability in timescales of a few years. The spectra of the discrete sources are diverse, suggesting different emission mechanisms, broadly correlated with the source luminosity: the most luminous sources exhibit harder emission, while the spectra of fainter sources appear softer. Spectra and variability suggest that the ULXs may be binary accretion sources; Supernova remnants or hot ISM in the Chandra beam may be responsible for some of the softer sources.

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