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X-ray Deep: Studying the Universe in X-rays

Neutron Stars and Black Holes in External Galaxies with NuSTAR

NuSTAR
Shown is a sample of nearby galaxies studied by NuSTAR. Our group is studying the black hole and neutron star binary populations in these galaxies.

Differentiating black hole from neutron star in X-ray binaries can be done by investigating their curvature and spectra. Similarly, as black hole binaries move through different accretion states, their X-ray spectra change dramatically at > 10keV, much more so than at lower energies.

NuSTAR's great increase in sensitivity at > 10keV over the past missions has provided the opportunity to constrain the nature of the resolved sources and to investigate accretion states of black hole binary populations in nearby galaxies for the first time.

The color-intensity and color-color diagrams are powerful tools for diagnosing point sources which are too faint for spectral analysis. (Yukita et al. 2016)

Yukita
X-ray binaries from M83 (black diamonds) and NGC 253 (orange circles), because the location in the diagram the majority of sources appear to be black hole binaries. (Yukita et al. 2016)