XMM-Newton-NEWS

CONTENTS

• Release of new versions of the XMM-Newton serendipitous source catalogues: 4XMM-DR9 and 4XMM-DR9S
• Release of full pipeline-reporcessed XMM-Newton data
• XSA V12.0 release with access to 4XMM DR9 and DR9S and to the reprocessed PPS products

NEW, COMPREHENSIVE VERSIONS OF THE XMM-NEWTON SERENDIPITOUS SOURCE CATALOGUES: 4XMM-DR9 AND 4XMM-DR9S

A new, improved version of the XMM-Newton EPIC Serendipitous Source Catalogue, 4XMM-DR9, has been released by the XMM-Newton Survey Science Centre (XMM-SSC) in collaboration with the SOC.

This version of the catalogue has been created after a full re-reduction of all of the XMM-Newton data taken since launch, 20 years ago, using improved calibration and software. A major improvement to the background model has resulted in more reliable source detection.

4XMM-DR9 includes 810795 X-ray detections which relate to 550124 unique X-ray sources from 11204 observations that were public by the 1st March 2019.

4XMM-DR9 covers a total sky area, with at least 1 ks exposure, of ~1152 square degrees if overlaps are taken into account, where some regions of the sky have been pointed as many as 69 times. Around 9.5% of all the detections are classified as extended, and spectra and time series have been extracted for 36% of the detections. The median positional uncertainty of the catalogue detections is 1.7 arcseconds (with a standard deviation of 1.4). Median sensitivities in the catalogue are ~5.3E-15 and ~1.2E-14 erg/cm2/s in the soft (0.2-2 keV) and hard (2-12 keV) X-ray band, respectively.

With 4XMM-DR9, we also release 4XMM-DR9s, a version of the catalogue created from overlapping observations. Stacking observations provides longer effective exposure times, resulting in better source parameters and higher sensitivity. Also, time variability is uncovered through the source detection process.

4XMM-DR9s is built from 1329 stacks (or groups) with 6604 contributing observations. Most of the stacks are composed of 2 observations and the largest has 352. The catalogue contains 288191 sources, of which 218283 have several contributing observations.

The catalogue is described in the paper Webb et al. (submitted) and the stacked catalogue is further described in Traulsen et al. (submitted). Details of the catalogue, the catalogue files and full 4XMM documentation are available on the XMM-SSC webpages at

     http://xmmssc.irap.omp.eu/Catalogue/4XMM-DR9/4XMM_DR9.html
 

and

     http://xmmssc.irap.omp.eu/Catalogue/4XMM-DR9s/4XMM_DR9stack.html

FITS files containing summary information about the observations used in the catalogue are also provided. FITS and CSV versions of the full 4XMM catalogue and a slimline version of the FITS file are also available for download at

    http://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/xmm-newton/xsa

The slimline version of 4XMM-DR9 has only one row per unique source (rather than per detection as in the main catalogue) and a reduced number of columns that essentially pertain to the unique source quantities.

Alongside the XSA user interface, 4XMM is also distributed through:

The XMM-SSC upper limit server (FLIX, Flux Limits from Images from XMM-Newton) has also been updated for 4XMM-DR9. This server provides an upper limit server for the flux given a non-detection in a region observed by XMM-Newton. The upper limit can be calculated for any of the standard XMM-Newton bands for a user defined statistical significance and sky region. It is accessible via the XMM-SSC webpages.

RELEASE OF FULL PIPELINE-REPROCESSED XMM-NEWTON DATA

XMM-Newton observations since the beginning of the mission have been fully reprocessed along 2019 with an enhanced processing pipeline, that has resulted in an homogeneous set of products for all the instruments. The 4XMM Source Catalogue has been constructed from the products of the reprocessing of observations publicly available before March 1st, 2019.

XSA V12.0 RELEASE WITH ACCESS TO 4XMM DR9 AND DR9S AND TO THE REPROCESSED PPS PRODUCTS

Access to the items described above is provided in the new version of the XMM-Newton Science Archive, XSA v12.0, that is available at

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

Yours sincerely,

XMM-Newton SOC