The XMM-Newton Serendipitous Survey. V. The Second XMM-Newton Serendipitous Source Catalogue

TL;DR

The 2XMM catalogue is the largest X-ray source catalog from XMM-Newton, containing nearly 247,000 detections of over 190,000 sources across 500 square degrees, enabling extensive X-ray astronomy research.

Contribution

This paper introduces the creation and detailed characteristics of the extensive 2XMM serendipitous X-ray source catalogue from XMM-Newton data.

Findings

Contains 246,897 detections from 3,491 observations

Covers over 500 square degrees of the sky

Provides a major resource for X-ray source studies

Abstract

Aims: Pointed observations with XMM-Newton provide the basis for creating catalogues of X-ray sources detected serendipitously in each field. This paper describes the creation and characteristics of the 2XMM catalogue. Methods: The 2XMM catalogue has been compiled from a new processing of the XMM-Newton EPIC camera data. The main features of the processing pipeline are described in detail. Results: The catalogue, the largest ever made at X-ray wavelengths, contains 246,897 detections drawn from 3491 public XMM-Newton observations over a 7-year interval, which relate to 191,870 unique sources. The catalogue fields cover a sky area of more than 500 sq.deg. The non-overlapping sky area is ~360 sq.deg. (~1% of the sky) as many regions of the sky are observed more than once by XMM-Newton. The catalogue probes a large sky area at the flux limit where the bulk of the objects that contribute to the X-ray background lie and provides a major resource for generating large, well-defined X-ray selected source samples, studying the X-ray source population and identifying rare object types. The main characteristics of the catalogue are presented, including its photometric and astrometric properties .