Context. The EXTraS project, based on data collected with the XMM-Newton observatory, provides us with a vast amount of light curves for X-ray sources. For each light curve, EXTraS also provides us with a set of features. From the EXTraS database, we extracted a tabular dataset of 31, 832 variable sources based on 108 features. Of these, 13, 851 sources were manually labeled as stellar flares or non-flares based on direct visual inspection. Aims. We employed a supervised learning approach to produce a catalog of stellar flares based on our dataset, subsequently releasing it to the community. We leveraged explainable AI tools and interpretable features to better understand our classifier. Methods. We trained a gradient-boosting classifier on 80% of the data, which had labels available. We computed the permutation feature importance scores, visualized the feature space using UMAP, and analyzed some false positive and false negative data points with the help of Shapley additive explanations. Specifically, we used it to measure the importance of each feature in determining the classifier’s prediction for each instance. Results. On the test set made up of the remainder 20% of our labeled data, we obtained an accuracy of 97.1%, with a precision of 82.4% and a recall of 73.3%. Our classifier outperforms a simple criterion based on fitting the light curve with a flare template and significantly surpasses a gradient-boosted classifier trained only on model-independent features. False positives appear to be related to flaring light curves that are not associated with a stellar counterpart, while false negatives often correspond to multiple flares or otherwise peculiar or noisy curves. Conclusions. We applied our trained classifier to currently unlabeled sources, leading to the compilation and release of the largest catalog of X-ray stellar flares to date. We estimated that integrating our classifier into the astronomers’ workflow will reduce the time spent on visually inspecting light curves by approximately half, compared to an approach based on flare template fitting. This holds implications for the classification of sources whose variability is less well established within EXTraS as well as for other catalogs and, possibly, forthcoming missions.

Context. The EXTraS project, based on data collected with the XMM-Newton observatory, provides us with a vast amount of light curves for X-ray sources. For each light curve, EXTraS also provides us with a set of features. From the EXTraS database, we extracted a tabular dataset of 31, 832 variable sources based on 108 features. Of these, 13, 851 sources were manually labeled as stellar flares or non-flares based on direct visual inspection. Aims. We employed a supervised learning approach to produce a catalog of stellar flares based on our dataset, subsequently releasing it to the community. We leveraged explainable AI tools and interpretable features to better understand our classifier. Methods. We trained a gradient-boosting classifier on 80% of the data, which had labels available. We computed the permutation feature importance scores, visualized the feature space using UMAP, and analyzed some false positive and false negative data points with the help of Shapley additive explanations. Specifically, we used it to measure the importance of each feature in determining the classifier’s prediction for each instance. Results. On the test set made up of the remainder 20% of our labeled data, we obtained an accuracy of 97.1%, with a precision of 82.4% and a recall of 73.3%. Our classifier outperforms a simple criterion based on fitting the light curve with a flare template and significantly surpasses a gradient-boosted classifier trained only on model-independent features. False positives appear to be related to flaring light curves that are not associated with a stellar counterpart, while false negatives often correspond to multiple flares or otherwise peculiar or noisy curves. Conclusions. We applied our trained classifier to currently unlabeled sources, leading to the compilation and release of the largest catalog of X-ray stellar flares to date. We estimated that integrating our classifier into the astronomers’ workflow will reduce the time spent on visually inspecting light curves by approximately half, compared to an approach based on flare template fitting. This holds implications for the classification of sources whose variability is less well established within EXTraS as well as for other catalogs and, possibly, forthcoming missions.

Context. The discovery of pulsations in (at least) six ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) has shown that neutron stars can accrete at (highly) super-Eddington rates, challenging the standard accretion theories. M51 ULX-7, with a spin signal of P similar or equal to 2.8 s, is the pulsating ULX (PULX) with the shortest known orbital period (P-orb similar or equal to 2 d) and has been observed multiple times by XMM-Newton, Chandra, and NuSTAR. Aims. We report on the timing and spectral analyses of three XMM-Newton observations of M51 ULX-7 performed between the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022, together with a timing re-analysis of XMM-Newton, Chandra, and NuSTAR archival observations. Methods. We investigated the spin signal by applying accelerated search techniques and studied the power spectrum through the fast Fourier transform, looking for (a)periodic variability in the source flux. We analysed the energy spectra of the 2021-2022 observations and compared them to the older ones. Results. We report the discovery of a recurrent, significant (> 3 sigma) broad complex at mHz frequencies in the power spectra of M51 ULX-7. We did not detect the spin signal, setting a 3 sigma upper limit on the pulsed fraction of less than or similar to 10% for the single observation. The complex is significantly detected also in five Chandra observations performed in 2012. Conclusions. M51 ULX-7 represents the second PULX for which we have a significant detection of mHz-QPOs at super-Eddington luminosities. These findings suggest that one should avoid using the observed QPO frequency to infer the mass of the accretor in a ULX. The absence of spin pulsations when the broad complex is detected suggests that the mechanism responsible for the aperiodic modulation also dampens the spin signal's pulsed fraction. If true, this represents an additional obstacle in the detection of new PULXs suggesting an even larger occurrence of PULXs among ULXs.

We report on the multi-year evolution of the population of X-ray sources in the nuclear region of NGC 3621 based on Chandra, XMM-Newton, and Swift observations. Among these, two sources, X1 and X5, after their first detection in 2008, seem to have faded below the detectability threshold, a most interesting fact as X1 is associated with the active galactic nucleus (AGN) of the galaxy. Two other sources, X3 and X6, are presented for the first time, the former showing a peculiar short-term variability in the latest available dataset, suggesting an egress from eclipse, and hence belonging to the handful of known eclipsing ultra-luminous X-ray sources. One source, X4, previously known for its heartbeat (i.e. a characteristic modulation in its signal with a period of approximate to 1 h), shows a steady behaviour in the latest observation. Finally, the brightest X-ray source in NGC 3621, here labelled X2, shows steady levels of flux across all the available datasets, but a change in its spectral shape, reminiscent of the behaviours of Galactic disc-fed X-ray binaries.

We present 294 pulsars found in GeV data from the Large Area Telescope (LAT) on the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Another 33 millisecond pulsars (MSPs) discovered in deep radio searches of LAT sources will likely reveal pulsations once phase-connected rotation ephemerides are achieved. A further dozen optical and/or X-ray binary systems colocated with LAT sources also likely harbor gamma-ray MSPs. This catalog thus reports roughly 340 gamma-ray pulsars and candidates, 10% of all known pulsars, compared to ≤11 known before Fermi. Half of the gamma-ray pulsars are young. Of these, the half that are undetected in radio have a broader Galactic latitude distribution than the young radio-loud pulsars. The others are MSPs, with six undetected in radio. Overall, ≥236 are bright enough above 50 MeV to fit the pulse profile, the energy spectrum, or both. For the common two-peaked profiles, the gamma-ray peak closest to the magnetic pole crossing generally has a softer spectrum. The spectral energy distributions tend to narrow as the spindown power E ̇ decreases to its observed minimum near 10 33 erg s −1 , approaching the shape for synchrotron radiation from monoenergetic electrons. We calculate gamma-ray luminosities when distances are available. Our all-sky gamma-ray sensitivity map is useful for population syntheses. The electronic catalog version provides gamma-ray pulsar ephemerides, properties, and fit results to guide and be compared with modeling results.

Context. We have investigated the multiwavelength emission of PSR J2021+4026, the only isolated γ-ray pulsar known to be variable, which in October 2011 underwent a simultaneous change in γ-ray flux and spin-down rate, followed by a second mode change in February 2018. Multiwavelength monitoring is crucial to understand the physics behind these events and how they may have affected the structure of the magnetosphere. Aims. The monitoring of pulse profile alignment is a powerful diagnostic tool for constraining magnetospheric reconfiguration. We aim to investigate timing or flux changes related to the variability of PSR J2021+4026 via multiwavelength observations, including γ-ray observations from Fermi-LAT, X-ray observations from XMM-Newton, and a deep optical observation with the Gran Telescopio Canarias. Methods. We performed a detailed comparison of the timing features of the pulsar in γ and X-rays and searched for any change in phase lag between the phaseogram peaks in these two energy bands. Although previous observations did not detect a counterpart in visible light, we also searched for optical emission that might have increased due to the mode change, making this pulsar detectable in the optical. Results. We have found a change in the γ-to X-ray pulse profile alignment by 0.21 ± 0.02 in phase, which indicates that the first mode change affected different regions of the pulsar magnetosphere. No optical counterpart was detected down to g′ = 26.1 and r′ = 25.3. Conclusions. We suggest that the observed phase shift could be related to a reconfiguration of the connection between the quadrupole magnetic field near the stellar surface and the dipole field that dominates at larger distances. This is consistent with the picture of X-ray emission coming from the heated polar cap and with the simultaneous flux and frequency derivative change observed during the mode changes.

We present 294 pulsars found in GeV data from the Large Area Telescope (LAT) on the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Another 33 millisecond pulsars (MSPs) discovered in deep radio searches of LAT sources will likely reveal pulsations once phase-connected rotation ephemerides are achieved. A further dozen optical and/or X-ray binary systems co-located with LAT sources also likely harbor gamma-ray MSPs. This catalog thus reports roughly 340 gamma-ray pulsars and candidates, 10% of all known pulsars, compared to $\leq 11$ known before Fermi. Half of the gamma-ray pulsars are young. Of these, the half that are undetected in radio have a broader Galactic latitude distribution than the young radio-loud pulsars. The others are MSPs, with 6 undetected in radio. Overall, >235 are bright enough above 50 MeV to fit the pulse profile, the energy spectrum, or both. For the common two-peaked profiles, the gamma-ray peak closest to the magnetic pole crossing generally has a softer spectrum. The spectral energy distributions tend to narrow as the spindown power $\dot E$ decreases to its observed minimum near $10^{33}$ erg s$^{-1}$, approaching the shape for synchrotron radiation from monoenergetic electrons. We calculate gamma-ray luminosities when distances are available. Our all-sky gamma-ray sensitivity map is useful for population syntheses. The electronic catalog version provides gamma-ray pulsar ephemerides, properties and fit results to guide and be compared with modeling results.

Context. XMM-Newton provides unprecedented insight into the X-ray Universe, recording variability information for hundreds of thousands of sources. Manually searching for interesting patterns in light curves is impractical, requiring an automated data-mining approach for the characterization of sources. Aims. Straightforward fitting of temporal models to light curves is not a sure way to identify them, especially with noisy data. We used unsupervised machine learning to distill a large data set of light-curve parameters, revealing its clustering structure in preparation for anomaly detection and subsequent searches for specific source behaviors (e.g., flares, eclipses). Methods. Self-organizing maps (SOMs) achieve dimensionality reduction and clustering within a single framework. They are a type of artificial neural network trained to approximate the data with a two-dimensional grid of discrete interconnected units, which can later be visualized on the plane. We trained our SOM on temporal-only parameters computed from ⪆105 detections from the Exploring the X-ray Transient and variable Sky catalog. Results. The resulting map reveals that the ≈2500 most variable sources are clustered based on temporal characteristics. We find distinctive regions of the SOM map associated with flares, eclipses, dips, linear light curves, and others. Each group contains sources that appear similar by eye. We single out a handful of interesting sources for further study. Conclusions. The condensed view of our dataset provided by SOMs allowed us to identify groups of similar sources, speeding up manual characterization by orders of magnitude. Our method also highlights problems with fitting simple temporal models to light curves and can be used to mitigate them to an extent. This will be crucial for fully exploiting the high data volume expected from upcoming X-ray surveys, and may also help with interpreting supervised classification models.

We analyzed the unexposed to the sky (outFOV) region of the MOS2 detector on board XMM-Newton covering 15 yr of data amounting to 255 Ms. We show convincing evidence that the origin of the unfocused background in XMM-Newton is due to energetic protons, electrons, and hard X-ray photons. Galactic cosmic rays are the main contributors as shown by the tight correlation (2.6% of total scatter) with the 1 GeV proton data of the SOHO EPHIN detector. Tight correlations are found with a proxy of the Chandra background rate, revealing the common source of background for detectors in similar orbits, and with the data of the EPIC Radiation Monitor, only when excluding Solar energetic particle events. The entrance to the outer electron belts is associated with a sudden increase in the outFOV MOS2 rate and a spectral change. These facts support the fact that MeV electrons can generate an unfocused background signal. The correlation between MOS2 outFOV data and the SOHO EPHIN data reveals a term constant in time and isotropic, similar to the one found in the study of the pn data. The most plausible origin of this component is hard unfocused X-ray photons of the cosmic X-ray background Compton scattering in the detector as supported by the strength of the signal in the two detectors with different thicknesses. Based on this physical understanding, a particle radiation monitor on board the Advanced Telescope for High Energy Astrophysics has been proposed and it is currently under study. It will be able to track different species with the necessary accuracy and precision to guarantee the challenging requirement of 2% reproducibility of the background.

We report on the systematic analysis of the X-ray observations of the ultra-luminous X-ray source XMMU J122939.7+075333 located in the globular cluster RZ 2109 in the Virgo galaxy NGC 4472. The inclusion of observations and time intervals ignored in previous works and the careful selection of extraction regions and energy bands have allowed us to identify new flaring episodes, in addition to the ones that made it one of the best black hole candidates in globular clusters. Although most observations are too short and sparse to recognize a regular pattern, the spacing of the three most recent X-ray flares is compatible with a ~34 hours recurrence time. If confirmed by future observations, such behavior, together with the soft spectrum of the X-ray flares, would be strikingly similar to the quasi-periodic eruptions recently discovered in galactic nuclei. Following one of the possible interpretations of these systems and of a peculiar class of extra-galactic X-ray transients, we explore the possibility that XMMU J122939.7+075333 might be powered by the partial disruption of a white dwarf by an intermediate mass (M~700 Msun) black hole.

Time-domain analysis of an archival XMM-Newton observation unveiled a very unusual variability pattern in the soft X-ray emission of PSR J1311-3430, a black widow millisecond pulsar in a tight binary (P_B=93.8 min) with a very low-mass (M~0.01 Msun) He companion star, known to show flaring emission in the optical and in the X-rays. A series of six pulses with a regular recurrence time of ~124 min is apparent in the 0.2-10 keV light curve of the system, also featuring an initial, bright flare and a quiescent phase lasting several hours. The X-ray spectrum does not change when the pulses are seen and is consistent with a power law with photon index Gamma~1.6, also describing the quiescent emission. The peak luminosity of the pulses is of several 10^32 erg/s. Simultaneous observations in the U band with the Optical Monitor onboard XMM and in the g' band from the Las Cumbres Observatory do not show any apparent counterpart of the pulses and only display the well-known orbital modulation of the system. We consider different hypotheses to explain the recurrent pulses: we investigate their possible analogy with other phenomena already observed in this pulsar and in similar systems and we also study possible explanations related to the interaction of the energetic pulsar wind with intrabinary material, but we found none of these pictures to be convincing. We identify simultaneous X-ray observations and optical spectroscopy as a possible way to constrain the nature of the phenomenon.

Our understanding of the background of the EPIC/pn camera on board XMM-Newton is incomplete. This affects the study of extended sources and can influence the predictions of the expected background of future X-ray missions, such as the Advanced Telescope for High Energy Astrophysics (ATHENA). Here we provide new results based on the analysis of the largest data set ever used. We focus on the unconcentrated component of the EPIC/pn background, supposedly related to cosmic rays interacting with detector and telescope structures. We show that the so-called out field-of-view region of the pn detector is actually exposed to the sky. After carefully cleaning from the sky contamination, the unconcentrated background measured in the out field-of-view region does not show significant spatial variations, and its time behavior is anticorrelated with the solar cycle. We find a very tight linear correlation between unconcentrated backgrounds detected in the EPIC/pn and EPIC/MOS2 cameras. This relationship permits the correct evaluation of the pn unconcentrated background of each exposure on the basis of MOS2 data, avoiding the use of the contaminated out field-of-view region of the pn, as done in standard techniques. We find a tight linear correlation between the pn unconcentrated background and the proton flux in the 630–970 MeV energy band, as measured by the EPHIN instrument on board SOHO. Through this relationship, we quantify the contribution of cosmic-ray interaction to the pn unconcentrated background. This reveals a second source that contributes to the pn unconcentrated background for a significant fraction (30%–70%). This agent does not depend on the solar cycle or vary with time and is roughly isotropic. After having ruled out several candidates, we find that the hard X-ray photons of the cosmic X-ray background satisfy all known properties of the constant component. Our findings provide an important observational confirmation of simulation results on ATHENA and suggest that a high-energy particle monitor could contribute decisively to the reproducibility of the background for both experiments on ATHENA.

We report on the results of an XMM-Newton observation of the Supergiant Fast X-ray Transient (SFXT) IGR J08408-4503 performed in June 2020. The source is composed by a compact object (likely a neutron star) orbiting around an O8.5Ib-II(f)p star, LM Vel. The X-ray light curve shows a very low level of emission, punctuated by a single, faint flare. Analysis of spectra measured during the flare and during quiescence is performed. The quiescent state shows a continuum spectrum well deconvolved to three spectral models: two components are from a collisionally-ionized plasma (with temperatures kT1=0.24 keV and kT2=0.76 keV), together with a power law model (photon index of 2.55), dominating above 2 keV. The X-ray flux emitted at this lowest level is 3.2$\times10^{-13}$ erg/cm2/s (0.5-10 keV, corrected for the interstellar absorption), implying an X-ray luminosity of 1.85$\times10^{32}$ erg/s (at 2.2 kpc). The two temperature collisionally-ionized plasma is intrinsic to the stellar wind of the donor star, while the power law can be interpreted as emission due to residual, low level accretion onto the compact object. The X-ray luminosity contributed by the power law component only, in the lowest state, is (4.8$\pm{1.4})\times10^{31}$ erg/s, the lowest quiescent luminosity detected from the compact object in an SFXT. Thanks to this very faint X-ray state caught by XMM-Newton, X-ray emission from the wind of the donor star LM Vel could be well-established and studied in detail for the first time, as well as a very low level of accretion onto the compact object. The residual accretion rate onto the compact object in IGR J08408-4503 can be interpreted as the Bohm diffusion of (possibly magnetized) plasma entering the neutron star magnetosphere at low Bondi capture rates from the supergiant donor wind at the quasi-spherical radiation-driven settling accretion stage.

We report on the results of X-ray observations of 4XMM J111816.0–324910, a transient ultraluminous X-ray source located in the galaxy NGC 3621. This system is characterized by a transient nature and marked variability with a characteristic timescale of ≈3500 s, in contract with other ultraluminous X-ray sources, which in the vast majority show limited intra-observation variability. Such a behavior is very reminiscent of the so-called heartbeats sometimes observed in the Galactic black hole binary GRS 1915+105, where the variability timescale is ∼10–1000 s. We study the spectral and timing properties of this object and find that overall, once the differences in the variability timescales are taken into account, they match quite closely those of both GRS 1915+105 and of a number of objects showing heartbeats in their light curves, including a confirmed neutron star and a supermassive black hole powering an active galactic nucleus. We investigate the nature of the compact object in 4XMM J111816.0–324910 by searching for typical neutron star signatures and by attempting a mass estimate based on different methods and assumptions. Based on the current available data, we are not able to unambiguously determine the nature of the accreting compact object responsible for the observed phenomenology.

We discovered 2.8 s pulsations in the X-ray emission of the ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX) M51 ULX-7 within the UNSEeN project, which was designed to hunt for new pulsating ULXs (PULXs) with XMM–Newton. The pulse shape is sinusoidal and large variations of its amplitude were observed even within single exposures (pulsed fraction from less than 5% to 20%). M51 ULX-7 is a variable source, generally observed at an X-ray luminosity between 10 and 10 erg s−1, located in the outskirts of the spiral galaxy M51a at a distance of 8.6 Mpc. According to our analysis, the X-ray pulsar orbits in a 2-d binary with a projected semi-major axis aX sin i ' 28 lt-s. For a neutron star (NS) of 1.4M , this implies a lower limit on the companion mass of 8M , placing the system hosting M51 ULX-7 in the high-mass X-ray binary class. The barycentric pulse period decreased by'0.4 ms in the 31 d spanned by our May–June 2018 observations, corresponding to a spinup rate Ṗ ' −1.5 × 10−10 s s−1. In an archival 2005 XMM–Newton exposure, we measured a spin period of ∼3.3 s, indicating a secular spin-up of Ṗsec ' −10−9 s s−1, a value in the range of other known PULXs. Our findings suggest that the system consists of an OB giant and a moderately magnetic (dipole field component in the range 10 G . Bdip . 10 G) accreting NS with weakly beamed emission (1/12 . b . 1/4).

Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) are a class of accreting compact objects with X-ray luminosities above 10(39) erg s(-1). The ULX population counts several hundred objects but only a fraction are well studied. Here we present a detailed analysis of all ULXs hosted in the galaxy NGC 7456. It was observed in X-rays only once in the past (in 2005) by XMM-Newton. but the observation was short and strongly affected by high background. In 2018, we obtained a new, deeper (similar to 90 ks) XMM-Newton observation that allowed us to perform a detailed characterization of the ULXs hosted in the galaxy. ULX-1 and ULX-2, the two brightest objects (L-X similar to 6-10 x 10(39) erg s(-1)), have spectra that can be described by a model with two thermal components, as often found in ULXs. ULX-1 also shows one order of magnitude in flux variability on short-term timescales (hundreds to thousands of kiloseconds). The other sources (ULX-3 and ULX-4) show flux changes of at least an order of magnitude, and these objects may be candidate transient ULXs, although longer X-ray monitoring or further studies are required to ascribe them to the ULX population. In addition, we found a previously undetected source that might be a new candidate ULX (labeled as ULX-5), with a luminosity of similar to 10(39) erg s(-1) and hard power-law spectral shape, whose nature is still unclear and for which a background active galactic nucleus cannot be excluded. We discuss the properties of all the ULXs in NGC 7456 within the framework of super-Eddington accretion onto stellar-mass compact objects. Although no pulsations were detected, we cannot exclude that the sources host neutron stars.

ABSTRACT The wealth of detections of millisecond pulsars (MSPs) in γ-rays by Fermi has spurred searches for these objects among the several unidentified γ-ray sources. Interesting targets are a sub-class of binary MSPs, dubbed ‘black widows’ (BWs) and ‘redbacks’ (RBs), which are in orbit with low-mass non-degenerate companions fully or partially ablated by irradiation from the MSP wind. These systems can be easily missed in radio pulsar surveys owing to the eclipse of the radio signal by the intra-binary plasma from the ablated companion star photosphere, making them better targets for multiwavelength observations. We used optical and X-ray data from public data bases to carry out a systematic investigation of all the unidentified γ-ray sources from the Fermi Large Area Telescope Third Source Catalog, which have been pre-selected as likely MSP candidates according to a machine-learning technique analysis. We tested our procedure by recovering known binary BW/RB identifications and searched for new ones, finding two possible candidates. At the same time, we investigated previously proposed BW/RB identifications and we ruled out one of them based upon the updated γ-ray source coordinates.

We present the first detection of an X-ray flare from an ultracool dwarf of spectral class L. The event was identified in the EXTraS database of XMM-Newton variable sources, and its optical counterpart, J0331-27, was found through a cross-match with the Dark Energy Survey Year 3 release. Next to an earlier four-photon detection of Kelu-1, J0331-27 is only the second L dwarf detected in X-rays, and much more distant than other ultracool dwarfs with X-ray detections (photometric distance of 240 pc). From an optical spectrum with the VIMOS instrument at the VLT, we determine the spectral type of J0331-27 to be L1. The X-ray flare has an energy of E-X,E- F similar to 2x10(33) erg, placing it in the regime of superflares. No quiescent emission is detected, and from 2.5 Ms of XMM-Newton data we derive an upper limit of L-X,L- qui< 10(27) erg s(-1). The flare peak luminosity (L-X,L- peak=6.3x10(29) erg s(-1)), flare duration (tau(decay)approximate to 2400 s), and plasma temperature (approximate to 16 MK) are similar to values observed in X-ray flares of M dwarfs. This shows that strong magnetic reconnection events and the ensuing plasma heating are still present even in objects with photospheres as cool as similar to 2100 K. However, the absence of any other flares above the detection threshold of E-X,E- F similar to 2.5x10(32) erg in a total of similar to 2.5 Ms of X-ray data yields a flare energy number distribution inconsistent with the canonical power law dN/dE similar to E-2, suggesting that magnetic energy release in J0331-27 - and possibly in all L dwarfs - takes place predominantly in the form of giant flares.

Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) are extragalactic X-ray emitters located off-centre of their host galaxy and with a luminosity in excess of a few 1039 erg s−1, if emitted isotropically1,2. The discovery of periodic modulation revealed that in some ULXs the accreting compact object is a neutron star3–7, indicating luminosities substantially above their Eddington limit. The most extreme object in this respect is NGC 5907 ULX-1 (ULX1), with a peak luminosity that is 500 times its Eddington limit. During a Chandra observation to probe a low state of ULX1, we detected diffuse X-ray emission at the position of ULX1. Its diameter is 2.7 ± 1.0 arcsec and contains 25 photons, none below 0.8 keV. We interpret this extended structure as an expanding nebula powered by the wind of ULX1. Its diameter of about 200 pc, characteristic energy of ~1.9 keV and luminosity of ~2 × 1038 erg s−1 imply a mechanical power of 1.3 × 1041 erg s−1 and an age of ~7 × 104 yr. This interpretation suggests that a genuinely super-Eddington regime can be sustained for timescales much longer than the spin-up time of the neutron star powering the system. As the mechanical power from a single ULX nebula can rival the injection rate of cosmic rays of an entire galaxy8, ULX nebulae could be important cosmic ray accelerators9. Diffuse X-ray emission is detected around an ultraluminous X-ray source, interpreted as a wind-powered expanding nebula. Its energetics suggests that a super-Eddington regime can be longer than the spin-up time of the central neutron star.

The low luminosity, X-ray flaring activity, of the sub-class of high mass X-ray binaries called Supergiant Fast X-ray Transients, has been investigated using XMM-Newton public observations, taking advantage of the products made publicly available by the EXTraS project. One of the goals of EXTraS was to extract from the XMM-Newton public archive information on the aperiodic variability of all sources observed in the soft X-ray range with EPIC (0.2-12 keV). Adopting a Bayesian block decomposition of the X-ray light curves of a sample of SFXTs, we picked out 144 X-ray flares, covering a large range of soft X-ray luminosities (1e32-1e36 erg/s). We measured temporal quantities, like the rise time to and the decay time from the peak of the flares, their duration and the time interval between adjacent flares. We also estimated the peak luminosity, average accretion rate and energy release in the flares. The observed soft X-ray properties of low-luminosity flaring activity from SFXTs is in qualitative agreement with what is expected by the application of the Rayleigh-Taylor instability model in accreting plasma near the neutron star magnetosphere. In the case of rapidly rotating neutron stars, sporadic accretion from temporary discs cannot be excluded.