Discovery of an ultra-luminous X-ray source candidate, ULX (X-8) in NGC 3384 with Chandra.

The present paper aims to study the previously unstudied Chandra observed X-ray point sources of NGC 3384. While most of the point sources in NGC 3384 are hard X-ray binaries, we report here the discovery of a candidate Ultra-luminous X-ray source (ULX), X-8 in NGC 3384 during an effective 28.67 ks Chandra observation. ULX, X-8 is found to have its 0.3-10.0 keV luminosity ∼1.52×10 ergs s and a bolometric luminosity ∼2.43×10 ergs s. The ULX is spectrally hard in X-rays, with Γ∼1.97 when fitted with an absorbed powerlaw. The spectral property of this object, when fitted with an absorbed disk blackbody, appears to be consistent with nearly a 30 M black hole accreting at ∼0.58 times its Eddington luminosity. The lightcurve of this ULX source, X-8 has shown no signature of short-term variability in kilo-seconds time scales in the present available Chandra observation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]