VLT/FORS2 observations of four high-luminosity ULX candidates

Abstract

We obtained Very Large Telescope/FOcal Reducer and low dispersion Spectrograph spectra of the optical counterparts of four high-luminosity (L_X ≥ 10⁴⁰ erg s^-1) Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULX) candidates from the catalogue of Walton et al. We first determined accurate positions for the X-ray sources from archival Chandra observations and identified counterparts in archival optical observations that are sufficiently bright for spectroscopy with an 8 m telescope. From the spectra we determine the redshifts to the optical counterparts and emission line ratios. One of the candidate ULXs, in the spiral galaxy ESO 306-003, appears to be a bona fide ULX in an H II region. The other three sources, near the elliptical galaxies NGC 533 and NGC 741 and in the ring galaxy AM 0644-741, turn out to be background active galactic nuclei (AGN) with redshifts of 1.85, 0.88 or 1.75 and 1.40, respectively. Our findings confirm the trend of a high probability of finding background AGN for systems with a ratio of log(F_X/F_opt) in the range of -1-1.