The first XMM-Newton slew survey catalogue: XMMSL1

TL;DR

This paper presents the first XMM-Newton slew survey catalogue, covering a large sky area with sensitive X-ray detections, resulting in two catalogues of thousands of sources across different energy bands.

Contribution

It introduces a new large-area X-ray sky survey from XMM-Newton slews, producing the first catalogue of sources detected during slewing operations.

Findings

Produced a 'full' catalogue with 4710 detections.

Created a 'clean' catalogue with 2692 reliable sources.

Detected 257 sources in the hard X-ray band at specified flux limits.

Abstract

We report on the production of a large area, shallow, sky survey, from XMM-Newton slews. The great collecting area of the mirrors coupled with the high quantum efficiency of the EPIC detectors have made XMM-Newton the most sensitive X-ray observatory flown to date. We use data taken with the EPIC-pn camera during slewing manoeuvres to perform an X-ray survey of the sky. Data from 218 slews have been subdivided into small images and source searched. This has been done in three distinct energy bands; a soft (0.2-2 keV) band, a hard (2-12 keV) band and a total XMM-Newton band (0.2-12 keV). Detected sources, have been quality controlled to remove artifacts and a catalogue has been drawn from the remaining sources. A 'full' catalogue, containing 4710 detections and a 'clean' catalogue containing 2692 sources have been produced, from 14% of the sky. In the hard X-ray band (2-12 keV) 257 sources are detected in the clean catalogue to a flux limit of 4x10^-12 ergs/s/cm2. The flux limit for the soft (0.2-2 keV) band is 6x10^-13 ergs/s/cm2 and for the total (0.2-12 keV) band is 1.2x10^-12 ergs/s/cm2. The source positions are shown to have an uncertainty of 8" (1-sigma confidence).