The XMM-Newton serendipitous survey ^*,**

V. The Second XMM-Newton serendipitous source catalogue

¹ 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