We present a Chandra ACIS-S observation of the nearby bulge-dominated Sa galaxy NGC 1291 .
The X-ray emission from the bulge resembles the X-ray emission from a sub-class of elliptical and S0 galaxies with low X-ray–to–optical luminosity ratios .
The X-ray emission is composed of a central point-like nucleus , \sim 50 point sources that are most likely low mass X-ray binaries ( LMXBs ) , and diffuse gas detectable out to a radius of 120 ^ { \prime \prime } ( 5.2 kpc ) .
The diffuse gas has a global temperature of 0.32 ^ { +0.04 } _ { -0.03 } keV and metallicity of 0.06 \pm 0.02 solar , and both quantities marginally decrease with increasing radius .
The hot gas fills the hole in the H i distribution , and the softening of the spectrum of the X-ray gas with radius might indicate a thermal coupling of the hot and cold phases of the interstellar medium as previously suggested .
The integrated X-ray luminosity of the LMXBs , once normalized by the optical luminosity , is a factor of 1.4 less than in the elliptical galaxy NGC 4697 or S0 galaxy NGC 1553 .
The difference in L _ { X,stellar } / L _ { B } between the galaxies appears to be because of a lack of very bright sources in NGC 1291 .
No sources above 3 \times 10 ^ { 38 } ergs s ^ { -1 } were found in NGC 1291 when \sim 7 were expected from scaling from NGC 4697 and NGC 1553 .
The cumulative L _ { X,stellar } / L _ { B } value including only sources below 1.0 \times 10 ^ { 38 } ergs s ^ { -1 } is remarkably similar between NGC 1291 and NGC 4697 , if a recent surface brightness fluctuation-determined distance is assumed for NGC 4697 .
If this is a common feature of the LMXB population in early-type systems , it might be used as a distance indicator .
Finally , a bright , variable ( 1.6 - 3.1 \times 10 ^ { 39 } ergs s ^ { -1 } ) source was detected at the optical center of the galaxy .
Its spectrum shows excess soft emission superimposed on a highly absorbed power law component , similar to what has been found in several other low luminosity active galactic nuclei .
However , the soft component does not vary in intensity like the hard component , indicating that the soft component is not reprocessed hard component emission .