The Massive Star Forming Region Cygnus OB2. I. Chandra catalogue of association members

TL;DR

This paper presents a comprehensive catalog of 1696 X-ray sources in the Cygnus OB2 star-forming region, combining deep Chandra observations with multi-wavelength data to identify and characterize young stellar objects.

Contribution

The study provides one of the largest X-ray source catalogs for a single star-forming region, employing advanced extraction, matching, and validation techniques to ensure high reliability.

Findings

High confidence in source authenticity (<1% false sources)

89% of sources have optical/near-IR counterparts

Detection of a large population of young stellar objects

Abstract

We present a catalogue of 1696 X-ray sources detected in the massive star forming region (SFR) Cygnus OB2 and extracted from two archival Chandra observations of the center of the region. A deep source extraction routine, exploiting the low background rates of Chandra observations was employed to maximize the number of sources extracted. Observations at other wavelengths were used to identify low count-rate sources and remove likely spurious sources. Monte Carlo simulations were also used to assess the authenticity of these sources. We used a Bayesian technique to identify optical or near-IR counterparts for 1501 (89%) of our sources, using deep observations from the INT Photometric H-alpha Survey, the Two Micron All Sky Survey, and the UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey-Galactic plane Survey. 755 (45%) of these objects have six-band r', H-alpha, i', J, H, and K optical and near-IR photometry. From an analysis of the Poisson false-source probabilities for each source we estimate that our X-ray catalogue includes < 1% of false sources, and an even lower fraction when only sources with optical or near-IR associations are considered. A Monte Carlo simulation of the Bayesian matching scheme allows this method to be compared to more simplified matching techniques and enables the various sources of error to be quantified. The catalogue of 1696 objects presented here includes X-ray broad band fluxes, model fits, and optical and near-IR photometry in what is one of the largest X-ray catalogue of a single SFR to date. The high number of stellar X-ray sources detected from relatively shallow observations confirms the status and importance of Cygnus OB2 as one of our Galaxy's most massive SFRs.