Spiral galaxies of the Virgo cluster

Virgo is the nearest and richest galaxy cluster in the local universe. It has been thoroughly studied at all wavelengths, but its X-ray coverage remains patchy: Chandra has observed most of its elliptical galaxies but only a few spirals. We propose to study a complete sample of spirals in Virgo. We will: a) discover new ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) and determine their luminosity, spatial distributions, and frequency per unit mass and star formation rate; b) quantify the age of their stellar environments, look for jet-inflated radio/optical ULX bubbles, measure the fraction of ULXs located in globular clusters; c) determine what fraction of spirals has an active nuclear BH, measure their Eddington ratios, test correlations of nuclear X-ray sources with nuclear star clusters.