A New Ultraluminous X-ray Source in the Nearby Edge-on Spiral NGC 891
  We report the discovery of a new candidate ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX)
in the nearby edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 891. The source, which has an absorbed
flux of F_X ~ 10^-12 erg/s/cm^2 (corresponding to L_X > 10^40 erg/s at 9 Mpc),
must have begun its outburst in the past 5 years as it is not detected in prior
X-ray observations between 1986 and 2006. We try empirical fits to the
XMM-Newton spectrum, finding that the spectrum is fit very well as emission
from a hot disk, a cool irradiated disk, or blurred reflection from the
innermost region of the disk. The simplest physically motivated model with an
excellent fit is a hot disk around a stellar-mass black hole (a super-Eddington
outburst), but equally good fits are found for each model. We suggest several
follow-up experiments that could falsify these models.
