XMM-Newton releases the largest catalogue of X-ray sources

The largest catalogue of X-ray sources ever has now been released. The catalogue, '2XMM', has been compiled from observations carried out with ESA's XMM-Newton space observatory over six years of operation.

The 2XMM Serendipitous Source Catalogue is the result of several years of development by the XMM-Newton Survey Science Centre (SSC), a consortium of institutes spread across Europe, on behalf of ESA.
In the study of energetic phenomena in the Universe, ranging from nearby comets to the most distant active galaxies, such a catalogue provides an unparalleled, invaluable new resource of information. The catalogue contains 247 000 X-ray source detections which relate to 192 000 unique X-ray sources, making it the largest collection of objects ever observed in X-rays.

Creation of such a rich catalogue was possible due to XMM-Newton's unique characteristics: a large collecting area combined with good spatial resolution and a wide field of view. The catalogue production process by the SSC has been designed to fully exploit XMM-Newton's X-ray imaging and spectroscopic capabilities.

Covering 360 square degrees of the sky, the catalogue complements deeper Chandra and XMM-Newton small area studies and covers the astronomical objects that dominate the X-ray background spread across the Universe. It provides a unique dataset for generating large, well-defined samples of various types of high-energy astrophysical objects. X-ray selection is the most efficient tool to pinpoint such objects.

The large sky area covered by the catalogue makes 2XMM a rich resource for exploring the overall properties of the X-ray source populations. Its large size makes it an especially powerful tool for the discovery of rare and unexpected objects.

The catalogue itself is complemented, for the first time, by X-ray spectra and light-curves of the brighter sources. This additional data forms a very valuable scientific resource in its own right, providing detailed diagnostics of astrophysical processes taking place in these brighter objects.

Source: European Space Agency
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