Chandra observations of M31

Garcia, M. R.; Murray, S. S.; Primini, F. A.; Forman, W. R.; Jones, C.; McClintock, J. E.
Bibliographical reference

Galaxies and their Constituents at the Highest Angular Resolutions, Proceedings of IAU Symposium #205, held 15-18 August 2000 at Manchester, United Kingdom. Edited by R. T. Schilizzi, 2001, p. 38.

Advertised on:
1
2001
Number of authors
6
IAC number of authors
0
Citations
7
Refereed citations
5
Description
As part of the Chandra Guaranteed Time Program we are imaging M31 once/month. The HRC is used to observe the entire galaxy to 10**37 ergs/sec, and interesting transients are followup up with ACIS observations which reach 10**36 ergs/sec. Thus the known (Galactic) types of accretion powered x-ray transients can detected and their spectra can be measured. These observations should lead to the first measurements of the mass function for stellar mass black holes in another galaxy. Highlights of the program to date include detection of a source within 1 arc-sec of the central super-massive black hole which has an unusually soft spectrum. A bright transient is detected 26 arc-sec to the west of the nucleus, which may be associated with a stellar mass black hole. The diffuse emission is clearly resolved from the point sources, and has a much softer spectrum that the typical point sources.