Abstract Details
| Name: Sayantan Bhattacharya Affiliation: University Of Massachusetts, Lowell Conference ID: ASI2024_1023 Title : Probing the Blue Supergiant X-ray Binary Population in IC 10 Authors and Co-Authors : Sayantan Bhattacharya 1,2 ; Silas G. T. Laycock 1,2 ; Dimitris M. Christodoulou 2 Abstract Type : Oral Abstract Category : Stars, Interstellar Medium, and Astrochemistry in Milky Way Abstract : The dwarf galaxy in Cassiopeia, IC 10, located in "close" proximity of 660 kpc, captivates astronomers with its young stellar population, abundant Wolf-Rayet stars, and the presence of massive stars in general. Leveraging a series of Chandra observations, we have identified the X-ray point sources. Correlating our list of x-ray sources with published optical catalogs we found those having an optical counterpart. Applying an optical color-magnitude selection to isolate blue supergiant stars, we find the final list of intriguing blue supergiants in a compact-object binary. The ongoing starburst in IC 10 has given rise to a diverse collection of exotic compact-object binaries, including IC 10 X-1 (a Wolf-Rayet and Blackhole high mass x-ray binary) and IC 10 X-2 (a Blue supergiant fast x-ray transient). Blue SG-XRBs include a major class of progenitors of double-degenerate binaries, hence their numbers are an important factor in modeling the rate of gravitational-wave sources. Identifying the nature of each individual source is a slow and difficult process, but ultimately necessary as it paves the way toward a comprehensive census of X-ray binaries (XRBs), enabling meaningful comparisons with other galaxies, for example, the Magellanic Clouds. |