HEAPOW: Spotting The X-ray Universe (2013 Aug 12)
The XMM-Newton X-ray telescope was launched in December 1999 and has been obtaining deep, sensitive pictures of X-ray emitting sources in space ever since. Astronomers point XMM's three co-aligned telescopes at objects of particular interest, but XMM's 3 cameras catch other nearby serendipitous sources too. Using the powerful ALICE supercomputer, scientists at the XMM-Newton Survey Science Centre have examined every XMM image and have painstakingly catalogued each and every X-ray source detected by XMM-Newton. This catalog, called the "3XMM Catalog", contains over a half million X-ray sources, including over 370,000 unique sources. The number of sources detected in the 3XMM catalog represents a 50% increase over previous X-ray source catalogs. The image above shows the distribution of the 3XMM sources on the sky; the inset shows individual sources in one region of the survey. Go take a look - you might find something interesting.
Leicester: Team Sets New Record for Cosmic X-ray Sightings
ESA: Latest XMM-Newton Catalogue Offers New X-ray Vision
XMM-Newton Serendipitous Source Catalog (3XMM-DR4)
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