XMM-Newton observation of NGC 2613

We discover that this galaxy contains a deeply embedded active nucleus with a 0.3-10keV luminosity of 3.3x10^40^erg/s and a line-of-sight absorption column of 1.2x10^23^cm^-2^. Within the 25mag arcsec-2 optical B-band isophote of the galaxy, we detect an additional four sources with an accumulated luminosity of 4.3x10^39^erg/s.

The bulk of the unresolved X-ray emission spatially follows the near-infrared (NIR) K-band surface brightness distribution; the luminosity ratio LX/LK~8x10^-4^ is consistent with that inferred from galactic discrete sources. This X-ray-NIR association and the compatibility of the X-ray spectral fit with the expected spectrum of a population of discrete sources suggest that low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs) are the most likely emitters of the unresolved emission in the disc region.