News 20180725 - XMM-Newton

XMM-Newton-NEWS

Contents:

• The first XMM-Newton Serendipitous Source Catalogue from overlapping observations (3XMM-DR7s)
• XSA v10.1 release with access to the 3XMM-DR7s Catalogue
• XMM-Newton Users' Group: Minutes of meeting and presentations available
• XMM-Newton Users Handbook update for AO-18
• Scientific Validation Report for SAS v17.0
• Documentation updated: EPIC and RGS Calibration Status and XMM-Newton Background documents
• XMM-Newton Science Workshop 2019: "Astrophysics of Hot Plasma in Extended X-ray Sources"
• Let us know about XMM-Newton related Ph.D. and prizes for XMM-Newton results
• Workshop Announcement: "INTEGRAL looks AHEAD to Multi-Messenger Astrophysics"

The first XMM-Newton Serendipitous Source Catalogue from overlapping observations (3XMM-DR7s)

A new XMM-Newton EPIC Serendipitous Source Catalogue made from stacking individual observations has been released. The catalogue, 3XMM-DR7s, has been compiled from 434 groups, comprising 1789 overlapping good-quality XMM-Newton observations, which have been selected from public observations taken between 2000 February 3 and 2016 December 15.

3XMM-DR7s contains 71951 unique sources and additional 216393 rows with source parameters derived for all observations at the fitted position. The catalogue provides positions and source parameters such as fluxes in the XMM-Newton standard energy bands, hardness ratios, quality estimate, and information on inter-observation variability. In addition, auxiliary data products have been produced for each source: a broad-band X-ray image, a colour-coded three-band X-ray image, an optical finding chart, and a long-term X-ray light curve.

3XMM-DR7s covers a total sky area of ~150 square degrees. Around 5% of the sources are classified as extended. The median positional uncertainty of the catalogue sources is 1.1 arcseconds with a median absolute deviation of 0.4 arcseconds. Median sensitivities in the catalogue are ~1.89E-14 erg/cm2/s in the 0.2-12 keV band. About 25% of the sources have all-EPIC fluxes below 10E-14 erg/cm²/s.

The creation of the 3XMM-DR7s catalogue is a joint venture carried out by the XMM-Newton Survey Science Centre (XMM-SSC) Consortium. The catalogue is described in the release paper by Traulsen et al. 2018 (submitted to A&A). Details of the catalogue, the catalogue files, and the full 3XMM documentation are available on the XMM-SSC webpages at

A FITS file containing summary information about the observations used in the catalogue is provided. 3XMM-DR7s can be browsed and downloaded at

Alongside the XSA user interface, 3XMM is also distributed through:

XSA v10.1 release with access to the 3XMM-DR7s Catalogue

A new version of the XMM-Newton Science Archive (XSA v10.1) is available at

This version includes access to the 3XMM Stacked Catalogue (DR7s) and some improved functionalities.

• The interface allows to search 3XMM-DR7s Stacked Catalogue sources and to display their fluxes and other parameters. It is also possible to deploy the individual observations used to obtain the stacked source and to view the parameters of the individual detections, if available. Stacked Catalogue sources are linked to the corresponding 3XMM sources, if already detected.
• People interested in e.g. observations containing only exposures obtained with CLOSED filters, can select them by marking the corresponding button in the Search panel.
• The XSA Table Access Protocol (TAP) schema has now a more user friendly view of the query parameters.

XMM-Newton Users' Group:
Minutes of meeting and presentations available

The XMM-Newton Users' Group met on the 17^th and 18^th of May 2018 at ESAC. The minutes of the meeting, together with the presentations, can be found at

     https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/xmm-newton/users-group
 

XMM-Newton Users Handbook update for AO-18

The XMM-Newton Users Handbook (UHB) has been updated to version 2.16 in preparation for the next Announcement of Opportunity (AO-18) which will open next 21^st of August.

The UHB contains information on the instrumentation on board XMM-Newton and serves as the main technical support document for proposal preparation, based on which potential XMM-Newton users can assess the technical feasibility of their planned observations.

The XMM-Newton Users Handbook is on-line at

Alternatively, pdf and postscript versions of the UHB can be downloaded from the "XMM-Newton Proposer's Info and Manuals" portal

Scientific Validation Report for SAS v17.0

The results of the scientific validation of the last version of the XMM-Newton Science Analysis System, SAS v17.0 (see issue #211 of this Newsletter), have been summarised in a report available under the SAS Scientific Validation page

Documentation updated:
EPIC and RGS Calibration Status and XMM-Newton Background documents

New versions of the following documents have been released:

• EPIC Calibration Status
• RGS Calibration Status
  both available from the XMM-Newton Calibration Portal:
       https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/xmm-newton/calibration

• The Behaviour of the XMM-Newton Background
  available from the XMM-Newton Background Analysis page:
       https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/xmm-newton/background

XMM-Newton Science Workshop 2019:
"Astrophysics of Hot Plasma in Extended X-ray Sources"

The XMM-Newton Science Operations Centre of the European Space Agency is organising the astrophysical workshop

Registration opening and abstract submission are planned for January 2019. Full details will be given in the First Announcement, that will be distributed via a dedicated Newsletter.

More information will be posted in the workshop web page

The Local Organising Committee can be contacted at

Let us know about XMM-Newton related Ph.D. and prizes for XMM-Newton results

As announced in previous issues of this Newsletter (e.g. issue #193), the XMM-Newton team is collecting information about the completion of doctorates and Ph.D. theses based on (or making use of) XMM-Newton observations.

We would appreciate if you - being a candidate or a supervisor of a doctorate - could let us know details through the page

Also we would be grateful if you could inform us (via a message to xmmhelp@sciops.esa.int, with subject "Ph.D. thesis work") in case you are aware of theses from, or supervised by, colleagues that make use of XMM-Newton data but are not yet included in the above list.

In addition, the XMM-Newton SOC would like to establish a list of prizes won based on XMM-Newton results. Information about such prizes can be sent via e-mail to the Helpdesk ( xmmhelp@sciops.esa.int) indicating the name of the winner, year, prize name and granting institution.

Workshop Announcement:
"INTEGRAL looks AHEAD to Multi-Messenger Astrophysics"

The 12^th INTEGRAL Conference and 1^st AHEAD Gamma-ray workshop "INTEGRAL looks AHEAD to Multi-Messenger Astrophysics" will take place in Geneva (Switzerland) from the 11^th to the 15^th February 2019.

On August 17 2017, a new era in astronomy was inaugurated by a short gamma-ray burst accompanying the gravitational wave event GW170817 detected by LIGO-Virgo. One of the most important observational challenges of our time is to establish the link between the discoveries of these new astronomies and the electromagnetic Universe. Gamma-ray astronomy has been, and will remain, pivotal in connecting new and "old" astronomies.

This conference will discuss recent developments in high-energy astronomy, with particular emphasis on its role in multi-messenger astronomy. One of the aims of the workshop is to review the status and development of future instruments and to discuss perspectives in observational gamma-ray astronomy.

Further information can be found at

Yours sincerely,

XMM-Newton SOC