The XMM-Newton serendipitous survey. V. The Second XMM-Newton serendipitous source catalogue
Pietsch, W.; Motch, C.; Brusa, M.; Barcons, X.; Ballet, J.; Freyberg, M. J.; Guillout, P.; Carrera, F. J.; Watson, M. G.; Schwope, A.; Barret, D.; Warwick, R.; Pakull, M. W.; Rosen, S.; Tedds, J.; Webb, N.; Osborne, J. P.; Caccianiga, A.; Severgnini, P.; Della Ceca, R.; Maccacaro, T.; Brunner, H.; Mateos, S.; Yuan, W.; Page, M.; West, R.; Lamer, G.; Stewart, I. M.; Michel, L.; Sakano, M.; Schröder, A. C.; Page, C. G.; Hambaryan, V.; Fyfe, D.; Saxton, R.; Stobbart, A. -M.; Pye, J.; Boller, T.; Ceballos, M.; Denby, M.; Denkinson, G.; Dupuy, S.; Farrell, S.; Fraschetti, F.; Mathiesen, B.; McMahon, R.; Simpson, M.; Sironi, G.; Stewart, G.; Worrall, D.
United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, China
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 deg^2. 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