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Guangxing Li

Publications and source records attributed to Guangxing Li.

20 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

A New Luminous blue variable in the outskirt of the Andromeda Galaxy

The hot massive luminous blue variables (LBVs) represent an important evolutionary phase of massive stars. Here, we report the discovery of a new LBV -- LAMOST J0037+4016 in the distant outskirt of the Andromeda galaxy. It is located in the south-western corner (a possible faint spiral arm) of M31 with an unexpectedly large projection distance of $\sim$ 22 kpc from the center. The optical light curve shows a 1.2 mag variation in $V$ band and its outburst and quiescence phases both last over several years. The observed spectra indicate an A-type supergiant at epoch close to the outburst phase and a hot B-type supergiant with weak [Fe II] emission lines at epoch of much dimmer brightness. The near-infrared color-color diagram further shows it follows the distribution of Galactic and M31 LBVs rather than B[e] supergiants. All the existing data strongly show that LAMOST J0037+4016 is an LBV. By spectral energy distribution fitting, we find it has a luminosity ($4.42 \pm 1.64$)$\times 10^5$ $L_{\odot}$ and an initial mass $\sim 30$ $M_{\odot}$, indicating its nature of less luminosity class of LBV.

astro-ph.SR↗

Exploring the Interstellar Medium Using an Asymmetric X-ray Dust Scattering Halo

SWIFT J1658.2-4242 is an X-ray transient discovered recently in the Galactic plane, with severe X-ray absorption corresponding to an equivalent hydrogen column density of $N_{\rm H,abs}\sim2\times10^{23}$ cm$^{-2}$. Using new Chandra and XMM-Newton data, we discover a strong X-ray dust scattering halo around it. The halo profile can be well fitted by the scattering from at least three separated dust layers. During the persistent emission phase of SWIFT J1658.2-4242, the best-fit dust scattering $N_{\rm H,sca}$ based on the COMP-AC-S dust grain model is consistent with $N_{\rm H,abs}$. The best-fit halo models show that 85-90 percent of the intervening gas and dust along the line of sight of SWIFT J1658.2-4242 are located in the foreground ISM in the Galactic disk. The dust scattering halo also shows significant azimuthal asymmetry, which appears consistent with the inhomogeneous distribution of foreground molecular clouds. By matching the different dust layers to the distribution of molecular clouds along the line of sight, we estimate the source distance to be $\sim$10 kpc, which is also consistent with the results given by several other independent methods of distance estimation. The dust scattering opacity and the existence of a halo can introduce a significant spectral bias, the level of which depends on the shape of the instrumental point spread function and the source extraction region. We create the Xspec dscor model to correct for this spectral bias for different X-ray instruments. Our study reenforces the importance of considering the spectral effects of dust scattering in other absorbed X-ray sources.

astro-ph.HE↗