MG11 
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An observers view of X-ray binaries and soft X-ray transients

Observations of Soft X-ray Transients (SXTs) with Chandra and XMM-Newton turned out to have a profound impact on two important areas of high energy astrophysics. One of which is on the study of cooling neutron stars. The spectra of many neutron star SXTs in quiescence was found to be well-fit by a neutron star atmosphere model (NSA) sometimes supplemented with a power-law component. Model fits especially to those cases where the accretion history is well known, such as quasi-persistent sources (sources that have accreted matter at a high rate for ~10 years) provide good test grounds for theoretical models. I will review the observational properties of several of these systems.

Constraints on the neutron star EoS from observations of LMXBs

We will present an overview of constraints on the neutron star EoS with an emphasis on recent measurements on neutron stars in low-mass X-ray binaries/soft X-ray transients. These systems might be more massive than the canonical 1.4 Msun neutron star due to preceding accretion. In particular we will review neutron star masses and constraints derived from cooling properties of neutron star soft X-ray transients.