XMM-Newton-NEWS


XMM-Newton-NEWS  #172,    28-Apr-2015

XMM-Newton Science Operations Centre at
ESA's European Space Astronomy Centre,
P.O. Box - Apdo. 78, 28691 Villanueva de la Cañada, Madrid, Spain

SOC Home Page: https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/xmm-newton/
Helpdesk web interface: https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/xmm-newton/xmm-newton-helpdesk
Helpdesk email address: xmmhelp@sciops.esa.int
News Mailing List: https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/xmm-newton/newsletter

Contents:



XSA v8.4 release with access to the 3XMM (DR5) and OM (SUSS2.1) catalogues

A new version of the XMM-Newton Science Archive (XSA v8.4) is available at

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

It includes, besides several improvements, access to the incremental versions of the EPIC (3XMM-DR5) and OM (XMM-SUSS2.1) catalogues.

Release of the new version of the XMM-Newton Serendipitous Source Catalogue: 3XMM (DR5)

A new version of the XMM-Newton EPIC Serendipitous Source Catalogue, 3XMM-DR5, has been released. The catalogue includes an extra year of data with respect to 3XMM-DR4 and corrects minor issues that exist in earlier catalogue versions.

The 3XMM-DR5 catalogue contains 565962 detections which relate to 396910 unique sources from 7781 observations that were public by the 31st December 2013. 3XMM-DR5 covers a total sky area, with at least 1 ks exposure, of ~877 square degrees if overlaps are taken into account, where some regions of the sky have been pointed as many as 48 times. This represents an increase of approximately 7% in terms of unique sources compared with 3XMM-DR4.

Around 10% of the detections are classified as extended, and spectra and time series have been extracted for around 25% of the sources. The positional uncertainty of the catalogue detections is generally less than 3 arcseconds (90% confidence) and the astrometric quality of 3XMM is improved with respect to previous releases. Typical sensitivities in the catalogue are ~6-15 and ~1.5-14 erg/cm2/s in the soft (0.2-2 keV) and hard (2-12 keV) X-ray band, respectively.

The creation of the 3XMM catalogue is a joint venture carried out by the XMM-Newton Survey Science Centre Consortium. The catalogue is described in Rosen, Webb, Watson et al. 2015, (A&A, submitted, see http://arxiv.org/abs/1504.07051). Details of the catalogue, the catalogue files and full 3XMM documentation are available at

     http://xmmssc.irap.omp.eu/Catalogue/3XMM-DR5/3XMM_DR5.html

FITS files containing summary information about the observations used in the catalogue are also provided. FITS and CSV versions of the full 3XMM catalogue and a slimline version of the FITS file are also available for download at

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

The slimline version has only one row per unique source and a reduced number of columns that essentially pertain to the unique source quantities.

Alongside the XSA user interface at

     http://nxsa.esac.esa.int/nxsa-web/#search

3XMM is also distributed through

XCATDB: http://xcatdb.unistra.fr/3xmmdr5
LEDAS: http://www.ledas.ac.uk
HEASARC: http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/W3Browse/xmm-newton/xmmssc.html
IRAP: http://xmm-catalog.irap.omp.eu/

Incremental version of the XMM-Newton OM Catalogue (XMM-SUSS2.1)

The OM Serendipitous Ultraviolet Source Survey Catalogue (XMM-SUSS) has been updated with the inclusion of all observations obtained in 2013 (XMM-SUSS2.1). The new data have been processed with the same SAS version as the already existing ones, namely SAS v14.

The observing period covered by the catalogue is now 2000-2013. The total number of entries is 6.25 million. They correspond to more than 4 million sources, of which 19% have multiple entries, coming from different observations. The number of observations included in the catalogue is 7170.

The XMM-SUSS catalogue can be accessed through the XSA search interface. Besides, either the complete catalogue or a reduced version of it can be downloaded at

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


Users Group meeting #16: Invitation from UG chair to contact them

The XMM-Newton Users Group (UG) will be holding its yearly meeting this coming May 21st and 22nd, at ESAC in Spain. This will be my first meeting as Chair of the UG, having taken over from Xavier Barcons, whom I would like to thank personally, and I believe also on behalf of the wider community for all his efforts in support of the XMM-Newton project, over the years.

The UG welcomes all comments and suggestions on any relevant aspect of XMM-Newton operations and future direction. You may send these either directly to me, or if you prefer to any member of the UG. So that we will be able to collate your inputs for the meeting, I ask that you e-mail them before Friday May 15th. Together with your support and feedback, the UG will advise the project and help to ensure continuation of XMM-Newton’s unique contribution to astrophysics.

Martin Ward, UG-Chair


The agenda for UG meeting #16 and contact information of the UG chair and all the other UG members are available at

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

Second Announcement: "Exploring the Hot and Energetic Universe"

As announced in a previous issue of this Newsletter (#171), the conference "Exploring the Hot and Energetic Universe: The first scientific conference dedicated to the Athena X-ray observatory" will take place from 8th to 10th September 2015 at ESAC, Madrid, Spain.

The Second Announcement inviting for contributed talks and posters is available now, together with information on the draft programme and accommodation, from the conference website at:

     http://www.rssd.esa.int/index.php?project=CONF2015&page=ATHENA2015

Abstract submission is possible until Monday, 1st June 2015. The Registration deadline is Friday, 21st August 2015.



Yours sincerely,
XMM-Newton SOC