Chandra Watches Over A Decade Of Variability In M31 Globular Clusters

Barnard, Robin; Li, Z.; Garcia, M.; Murray, S.
Bibliographical reference

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #218, #122.02; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 43, 2011

Advertised on:
5
2011
Number of authors
4
IAC number of authors
0
Citations
0
Refereed citations
0
Description
The central region of M31 has been monitored with Chandra > 120 times over the last 11 years. In this region we find X-ray sources corresponding to 35 out of 420 globular clusters; these are highly likely to be X-ray binaries. We have created long-term, calibrated lightcurves for all 35 sources, and will present highlights of our variability survey. We have detected significant variability in all the sources with 0.3-10 keV luminosity > 2x10E+36 erg/s. Since the emission spectra of background active galaxies often resemble those of X-ray binaries, the long term variability will be a valuable tool for identifying X-ray binaries in the remaining 400 sources in our field. This work is funded by Chandra grant GO9-0100X and HST grant GO-1101.