NGC 4636 Chandra X-Ray Point Source Catalog

This catalog lists the X-ray point-source population in the nearby Virgo elliptical galaxy NGC 4636 from three Chandra X-ray observations. These observations, totaling ~193 ks after time filtering, were taken with the Advanced CCD Imaging Camera (ACIS) over a three-year period. Using a wavelet decomposition detection algorithm, the authors detected 318 individual point sources. For their analysis, they used a subset of 277 detections with &gt;= net 10 counts (a limiting luminosity of approximately 1.2 x 10&lt;sup&gt;37&lt;/sup&gt; erg s&lt;sup&gt;-1&lt;/sup&gt; in the 0.5-2 keV band, outside the central 1.5 arcminutes bright galaxy core). This table contains this subset of 277 X-ray sources. The authors discuss the radial distribution of the point sources. Between 1.5 and 6 arcminutes from the center, 25% of the sources are likely to be background sources (active galactic nuclei (AGNs)) and 75% to be low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs) within the galaxy, while at radial distances greater than 6 arcminutes, background sources (AGN) will dominate the point sources. The authors explore short and long-term variability (over timescales of 1 day to three years) for X-ray point sources in this elliptical galaxy. 54 sources (24%) in the common ACIS fields of view show significant variability between observations. Of these, 37 are detected with at least 10 net counts in only one observation and thus may be &quot;transient.&quot; In addition, ~10% of the sources in each observation show significant short-term variability. The cumulative luminosity function (LF) for the point sources in NGC 4636 can be represented as a power law of slope Alpha = 1.14 +/- 0.03. The authors do not detect, but estimate an upper limit of ~4.5 x 10&lt;sup&gt;37&lt;/sup&gt; erg s&lt;sup&gt;-1&lt;/sup&gt; to the current X-ray luminosity of, the historical supernova SN1939A. They find 77 matches between X-ray point sources and globular cluster (GC) candidates found in deep optical images of NGC 4636. In the annulus from 1.5 to 6 arcminutes of the galaxy center, 48 of the 129 X-ray point sources (37%) with &gt;=10 net counts are matched with GC candidates. Since they expect 25% of these sources to be background AGN, the percentage matched with GCs could be as high as 50%. Of these matched sources, the authors find that ~70% are associated with the redder GC candidates, those that are thought to have near-solar metal abundance. The fraction of GC candidates with an X-ray point source match decreases with decreasing GC luminosity. The authors do not find a correlation between the X-ray luminosities of the matched point sources and the luminosity or color of the host GC candidates. The LFs of the X-ray point sources matched with GCs and those that are unmatched have similar slopes over 1.8 x 10&lt;sup&gt;37&lt;/sup&gt; erg s&lt;sup&gt;-1&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;= L&lt;sub&gt;x&lt;/sub&gt; &lt;= 1 x 10&lt;sup&gt;38&lt;/sup&gt; erg s&lt;sup&gt;-1&lt;/sup&gt;. This table was created by the HEASARC in July 2009 based on electronic versions of Tables 2 and 3 from the paper obtained from the ApJ web site, but excluding the 7 entries in Table 3 which corresponded to weaker X-ray sources which were not listed in Table 2. Some of the values for the name parameter in the HEASARC&#39;s implementation of this table were corrected in April 2018. This is a service provided by NASA HEASARC .

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Organization: National Aeronautics and Space Administration