The XMM-Newton serendipitous survey - VII. The third XMM-Newton serendipitous source catalogue

By Mike Watson, A. Schröder, D. Fyfe, C. Page, G. Lamer, S. Mateos, J. Pye, M. Sakano, S. Rosen, J. Ballet and 40 more. 2015

564 citations recorded by the source corpus.

© ESO, 2016.Context. Thanks to the large collecting area (3 × ∼1500 cm2 at 1.5 keV) and wide field of view (30′ across in full field mode) of the X-ray cameras on board the European Space Agency X-ray observatory XMM-Newton, each individual pointing can result in the detection of up to several hundred X-ray sources, most of which are newly discovered objects. Since XMM-Newton has now been in orbit for more than 15 yr, hundreds of thousands of sources have been detected. Aims. Recently, many improvements in the XMM-Newton data reduction algorithms have been made. These include enhanced source characterisation and reduced spurious source detections, refined astrometric precision of sources, greater net sensitivity for source detection, and the extraction of spectra and time series for fainter sources, both with better signal-to-noise. Thanks to these enhancements, the quality of the catalogue products has been much improved over earlier catalogues. Furthermore, almost 50% more observations are in the public domain compared to 2XMMi-DR3, allowing the XMM-Newton Survey Science Centre to produce a much larger and better quality X-ray source catalogue. Methods. The XMM-Newton Survey Science Centre has developed a pipeline to reduce the XMM-Newton data automatically. Using the latest version of this pipeline, along with better calibration, a new version of the catalogue has been produced, using XMM-Newton X-ray observations made public on or before 2013 December 31. Manual screening of all of the X-ray detections ensures the highest data quality. This catalogue is known as 3XMM. Results. In the latest release of the 3XMM catalogue, 3XMM-DR5, there are 565 962 X-ray detections comprising 396 910 unique X-ray sources. Spectra and lightcurves are provided for the 133 000 brightest sources. For all detections, the positions on the sky, a measure of the quality of the detection, and an evaluation of the X-ray variability is provided, along with the fluxes and count rates in 7 X-ray energy bands, the total 0.2-12 keV band counts, and four hardness ratios. With the aim of identifying the detections, a cross correlation with 228 catalogues of sources detected in all wavebands is also provided for each X-ray detection. Conclusions. 3XMM-DR5 is the largest X-ray source catalogue ever produced. Thanks to the large array of data products associated with each detection and each source, it is an excellent resource for finding new and extreme objects.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

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Citations in the corpus

The SRG/eROSITA all-sky survey (2024, unknown): “In terms of pure source numbers, the largest X-ray catalogue previous to eRASS1 is the XMM-Newton serendipitous catalogue (4XMM: Rosen et al. 2016; Webb et al. 2020).”
CONSTRAINING THE MILKY WAY'S HOT GAS HALO WITH O vii AND O viii EMISSION LINES (2014, methodology): “The authors used data from the Second XMM-Newton Serendipitous Source Catalog 3 (2XMM; Watson et al. 2009) for automated X-ray point source removal.”
A COMPLETE SAMPLE OF ULTRALUMINOUS X-RAY SOURCE HOST GALAXIES (2011, background): “Recently, Sutton et al. (2011) described seven highluminosity ULX candidates, LX > 5×1040 erg s−1, identified as part of a cross-correlation of the RC3 catalog of galaxies with the second XMM-Newton catalog of serendipitously detected X-ray sources from pointed observations (Watson et al. 2009).”
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Quasar Catalog: Twelfth data release (2016, unknown): “All-Sky Survey (RASS; Voges et al. 1999, 2000), and the fourth data release of the Third XMM-Newton Serendipitous Source Catalog (Watson et al. 2009).”
Second ROSAT all-sky survey (2RXS) source catalogue (2016, methodology): “Similar techniques are used for the XMM-Newton catalogues (Watson et al. 2009) and the 1SXPS Swift-XRT catalogue (Evans et al. 2014).”
The ultraluminous state revisited: fractional variability and spectral shape as diagnostics of super-Eddington accretion (2013, methodology): “…Middleton et al. 2012), and all ULXs with a 0.3–10 keV count rate of 0.3 count s−1 in at least one observation in a cross-correlation of the 2XMM-DR3 (Watson et al. 2009) and the Third Reference Catalogue of Bright Galaxies (RC3; de Vaucouleurs et al. 1991) catalogues (Middleton et al., in…”
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey quasar catalog: tenth data release (2013, methodology): “We cross-correlate the DR10Q catalog with the second XMM-Newton Serendipitous Source Catalog (Third Data Release, 2XMMi-DR3; Watson et al. 2009) using a standard 5′′ matching radius.”
The CARMENES search for exoplanets around M dwarfs (2018, methodology): “They are thought to be inactive, with no emission in Hα (Jeffers et al. 2018) and only very faint X-ray emission for the case of GJ 1265 (Rosen et al. 2016).”
1SXPS: A DEEP SWIFT X-RAY TELESCOPE POINT SOURCE CATALOG WITH LIGHT CURVES AND SPECTRA (2013, methodology): “To do this we identified XRT observations of 2XMMiDR3 (Watson et al. 2009) fields, selected from that catalog all sources expected to contribute at least two events to the XRT image (assuming a typical AGN spectrum: NH = 3×1020 cm−2, Γ = 1.7), and visually inspected the XRT image to ensure that…”