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Issue A&A Volume 493, Number 1, January I 2009 Page(s) 339 - 373 Section Catalogs and data DOI 10.1051/0004-6361:200810534 Published online 27 October 2008

A&A 493, 339-373 (2009)
DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361:200810534

The XMM-Newton serendipitous survey

V. The Second XMM-Newton serendipitous source catalogue

M. G. Watson¹, A. C. Schröder¹, D. Fyfe¹, C. G. Page¹, G. Lamer², S. Mateos¹, J. Pye¹, M. Sakano¹, S. Rosen¹, J. Ballet³, X. Barcons⁴, D. Barret⁵, T. Boller⁶, H. Brunner⁶, M. Brusa⁶, A. Caccianiga⁷, F. J. Carrera⁴, M. Ceballos⁴, R. Della Ceca⁷, M. Denby¹, G. Denkinson¹, S. Dupuy⁵, S. Farrell⁵, F. Fraschetti³, M. J. Freyberg⁶, P. Guillout⁸, V. Hambaryan^{2, 9}, T. Maccacaro¹⁰, B. Mathiesen³, R. McMahon¹¹, L. Michel⁸, C. Motch⁸, J. P. Osborne¹, M. Page¹², M. W. Pakull⁸, W. Pietsch⁶, R. Saxton¹³, A. Schwope², P. Severgnini⁷, M. Simpson¹, G. Sironi^{1, 7}, G. Stewart¹, I. M. Stewart^{1, 14}, A.-M. Stobbart¹, J. Tedds¹, R. Warwick¹, N. Webb⁵, R. West¹, D. Worrall¹⁵, and W. Yuan<sup>11, 16

1</sup>  Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Leicester, Leicester, LE1 7RH, UK
    e-mail: mgw@star.le.ac.uk
²  Astrophysikalisches Institut Potsdam (AIP), An der Sternwarte 16, 14482 Potsdam, Germany
³  AIM, DSM/IRFU/SAp, CEA Saclay, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France
⁴  Instituto de Fisica de Cantabria (CSIC-UC), Avenida de los Castros, 39005 Santander, Spain
⁵  CNRS, Université Paul Sabatier & Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées, 9 avenue du Colonel Roche, 31400 Toulouse, France
⁶  Max-Planck-Institut für Extraterrestrische Physik, Giessenbachstraße 1, 85748 Garching, Germany
⁷  INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera, via Brera 28, 20121 Milan, Italy
⁸  Observatoire Astronomique, UMR 7550 CNRS, Université Louis Pasteur, 11 rue de l'Université, 67000 Strasbourg, France
⁹  Astrophysikalisches Institut und Universitäts-Sternwarte, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Schillergässchen 3, 07745 Jena, Germany
¹⁰  INAF – Headquarters, via del Parco Mellini 84, 00136 Rome, Italy
¹¹  Institute of Astronomy, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0HA, UK
¹²  Mullard Space Science Laboratory, University College London, Holmbury St. Mary, Dorking, Surrey RH5 6NT, UK
¹³  ESA/ESAC, Apartado 78, 28691 Villanueva de la Cañada, Madrid, Spain
¹⁴  Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, UK
¹⁵  H.H. Wills Physics Laboratory, University of Bristol, Tyndall Avenue, Bristol BS8 1TL, UK
¹⁶  National Astronomical Observatories of China/Yunnan Observatory, Phoenix Hill, PO Box 110, Kunming, Yunnan, PR China

Received 7 July 2008 / Accepted 14 October 2008

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 deg². The non-overlapping sky area is ~360 deg² (~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

Key words: X-rays: general -- catalogs -- surveys

© ESO 2008

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