Face-on SS 433 Stars as a Possible New Type of Extragalactic X-Ray Sources
The object SS433 is a well-known source of relativistic jets, which are formed in supercritical accretion disk. It is very probable that the disk has polar channels and their radiation is collimated (the photo-cones). A face-on SS433 object can appear as ultra-bright and highly variable X-ray source, Lx ˜ 1040 − 1042 erg/s. We discuss the properties of these hypothetical objects and their frequency expected in galaxies. We describe a search for such objects using the ROSAT All Sky Survey and RC3 catalog of galaxies. Among the total 418 positive correlations we find that 142 sources in S and Irr galaxies are unknown as AGNs. Nuclear sources among them still contain many AGNs. Non-nuclear (offset) sources are rather hard, their X-ray luminosities are 1039 − 1041 erg/s. Their observed frequency is about 4–5% per galaxy, that is in agreement with expected frequency of the face-on SS 433 stars. The only way to recognize such stars is their expected violent variability in X rays.