The ultraluminous X-ray source NGC 1313 X-2 - Its optical counterpart and environment

TL;DR

This study confirms the optical counterpart of the ultraluminous X-ray source NGC 1313 X-2, analyzes its environment and variability, and discusses implications for the nature of its mass donor and accretion disk.

Contribution

The paper provides a detailed analysis of the optical counterpart and environment of NGC 1313 X-2, clarifying previous discrepancies and highlighting the role of accretion disk variability.

Findings

Confirmed the optical counterpart as a blue star of about 23 mag.

Identified the system as part of a 20 Myr old poor cluster.

Detected significant photometric variability indicating accretion disk dominance.

Abstract

NGC 1313 X-2 is one of the brightest ultraluminous X-ray sources in the sky, at both X-ray and optical wavelengths; therefore, quite a few studies of available ESO VLT and HST data have appeared in the literature. Here, we present our analysis of VLT/FORS1 and HST/ACS photometric data, confirming the identification of the B ~ 23 mag blue optical counterpart. We show that the system is part of a poor cluster with an age of 20 Myr, leading to an upper mass limit of some 12 M_sun for the mass donor. We attribute the different results with respect to earlier studies to the use of isochrones in the F435W and F555W HST/ACS photometric system that appear to be incompatible with the corresponding Johnson B and V isochrones. The counterpart exhibits significant photometric variability of about 0.2 mag amplitude, both between the two HST observations and during the one month of monitoring with the VLT. This includes variability within one night and suggests that the light is dominated by the accretion disk in the system and not by the mass donor.