Estimated observed X-ray luminosity for a binary with , , and days under different assumptions. The solid green curve is the accretion luminosity corresponding to the mass-accretion rate onto the NS, assuming a fixed radiative efficiency (η = 0.1). The solid orange curve is the accretion luminosity corresponding to a super-Eddington accretion disc following the Shakura & Sunyaev (1973) disc model given by Eq. (8). The solid blue curve is the isotropic-equivalent accretion luminosity corresponding to beamed super-Eddington emission following the King et al. (2001) geometric beaming model (limited at 10⁴² erg s⁻¹) given by Eqs. (9) and (10). Four reference luminosity values, corresponding to L_Edd (solid black line), 10 L_Edd (dashed black line), 100 L_Edd (dotted black line), and 1000 L_Edd (dot-dashed black line), are also plotted. The initial properties of this binary are highlighted with a magenta star in Fig. 6.