Example spectra taken directly from the 3XMM catalogue, showing the diversity of the sources in the 3XMM catalogue. Energy (keV) is given on the abscissa and count s^-1 keV^-1 on the ordinate. a) 3XMM J052532.5+062533, an X-ray source of unknown nature, as the majority of the sources are in 3XMM b) 3XMM J123536.6-395433 a Seyfert 2 galaxy (NGC 4507) c) 3XMM J125141.9+273226, a rotationally variable star, 31 Com d) 3XMM J162838.2+393303, a cluster of galaxies e) 3XMM J011127.5-380500, the pn spectrum of NGC 424, a Seyfert 2 galaxy f) 3XMM J185246.6+003317, a new transient magnetar discovered by Zhou et al. (2014). Some low data points can be seen in the plots originating from pn data, but these are corrected for when the spectra are plotted in conjunction with the distributed response files.