[Normal Galaxies, Clusters of Galaxies -- Oral ]
M31 in the Chandra Era: A High Definition Movie of a Nearby
Galaxy
Albert Kong, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan
Rosanne Di Stefano (CfA)
M31 has been a prime targets for all X-ray missions since the
first detection in 1974. With its superb spatial resolution, Chandra is
unique in resolving dense source regions and detecting faint sources.
Since the launch of Chandra, M31 has been regularly observed. It is
perhaps the only nearby galaxy which is observed by an X-ray telescope
regularly throughout operation. With 10 years of observations, the
center of M31 has been observed with Chandra for nearly 1 Msec. The
X-ray skies of M31 not only consist of many transients and variables,
globular cluster X-ray sources in M31 are also different from our Milky
Way. They are in general more luminous and one of them may even host an
intermediate-mass black hole. Supersoft and quasi-soft X-ray sources in
M31 are the best kept secret to unlock the nature of the progenitor of
Type Ia supernova. In this talk, I will review some of the important
Chandra discoveries in M31 in the past 10 years.