Deep Chandra observations of the Grand Design Spiral M81: A First Look
Abstract
We present a deep Chandra ACIS-I survey of M81 (4 fields, ~200 ks each, total 800 ks) sampling the entire optical, and a large fraction of the extended UV, disks. We detected about 600 point sources down to a sensitivity limit of ~ 6 x 10^35 erg/s. Our X-ray point sources comprise X-ray binary stars, background active galactic nuclei, foreground stars, and supernova remnants (SNRs). We classify the detected X-ray point sources by cross-correlating with several multi-wavelength source catalogs (IR: WISE, Spitzer; optical: Pan-STARRS), as well as published SNR and globular cluster catalogs. We construct X-ray binary luminosity functions for galactic substructures such as the bulge, disk, spiral arms, halo, extended UV disk and globular clusters, which can then be compared to state-of-the-art X-ray binary population synthesis models.
- Publication:
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American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #233
- Pub Date:
- January 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AAS...23326013Y