Abstract:
Studies of the X-ray population of spiral galaxies other than our Galaxy are of importance especially for the understanding of X-ray binaries and other X-ray emitting sources. The X-ray population of spiral galaxies is mainly composed of supernova remnants (SNRs), low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs), high-mass X-ray binaries (HMXBs), and other sources for which the nature is still not clear. The latter are mainly supersoft sources (SSSs), characterized by very soft spectra and luminosities in the range of 10^36-10^39 erg/s, and ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs), characterized by a luminosity >10^39 erg/s.
In this thesis, I study the X-ray population of the nearby spiral galaxy NGC 300, using ~66 ksec XMM-Newton data obtained during the observations of 2000 December/ 2001 January. A total of 86 sources inside the D25 were detected above a maximum likelihood threshold of 10, in the 0.3-6 kev band. I derived for these sources, global properties as X-ray colors and fluxes. Using optical data taken with the 2.2m MPG/ESO telescope, and cross-correlating with the SIMBAD catalogue of known objects, I attempted to classify the sources, mainly from the color-color diagram, and compared with other nearby spiral galaxies. I also performed a deeper analysis of the four brightest sources, for which spectral fitting was possible, and show their light curve.