A New Ultraluminous X-ray Source in the Nearby Edge-on Spiral NGC 891

TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery of a new ultraluminous X-ray source in NGC 891, analyzing its spectral properties and suggesting it is likely a super-Eddington outburst from a stellar-mass black hole.

Contribution

It presents the first detection and spectral analysis of a ULX in NGC 891, exploring multiple models to explain its emission.

Findings

The source has an X-ray luminosity >10^40 erg/s.

Spectral fits suggest a hot disk or reflection model.

The source likely underwent a super-Eddington outburst.

Abstract

We report the discovery of a new candidate ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX) in the nearby edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 891. The source, which has an absorbed flux of F_X ~ 10^-12 erg/s/cm^2 (corresponding to L_X > 10^40 erg/s at 9 Mpc), must have begun its outburst in the past 5 years as it is not detected in prior X-ray observations between 1986 and 2006. We try empirical fits to the XMM-Newton spectrum, finding that the spectrum is fit very well as emission from a hot disk, a cool irradiated disk, or blurred reflection from the innermost region of the disk. The simplest physically motivated model with an excellent fit is a hot disk around a stellar-mass black hole (a super-Eddington outburst), but equally good fits are found for each model. We suggest several follow-up experiments that could falsify these models.