A new comprehensive 2D model of the point spread functions of the<i>XMM-Newton</i>EPIC telescopes: spurious source suppression and improved positional accuracy

Read, A. M.; Rosen, S. R.; Saxton, R. D.; Ramírez, José Manuel Ricardo

doi:10.1051/0004-6361/201117525

Cited by 56 publications

(45 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…The cores and spoke patterns of the PSFs were then modelled independently so that implementation within the XMM-Newton SAS calibration software then enables PSFs to be reconstructed that take the off-axis and azimuthal locations of a source into account, as well as the energy band. The details of the issues associated with the default PSF and the construction and validation of the empirical PSF are presented in Read et al (2011).…”

Section: Source Detection Using the Empirical Point Spread Function (mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…With the empirical PSFs, fewer such spurious detections are found, especially in the wings of bright objects positioned at larger (>6 ) offaxis angles. Thirdly, as a result of the work on the PSFs, the astrometric accuracy of XMM-Newton source positions has been significantly improved (see Read et al 2011).…”

Section: Source Detection Using the Empirical Point Spread Function (mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A second PSF-related problem that affected 2XMMi-DR3 positions was uncovered during early testing of the empirical PSF (see Read et al 2011). This arose from a 0.5 pixel error (in both the x and y directions) in the definition of the pixel coordinate system of the medium-accuracy PSF map -as pixels in the PSF map are defined to be 1 × 1 , the error is equivalent to 0.5 in each direction.…”

Section: Other Corrections Related To the Psfmentioning

confidence: 99%

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TheXMM-Newtonserendipitous survey

Rosen

Webb

Watson

et al. 2016

A&A

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Context. Thanks to the large collecting area (3 × ∼1500 cm 2 at 1.5 keV) and wide field of view (30 across in full field mode) of the X-ray cameras on board the European Space Agency X-ray observatory XMM-Newton, each individual pointing can result in the detection of up to several hundred X-ray sources, most of which are newly discovered objects. Since XMM-Newton has now been in orbit for more than 15 yr, hundreds of thousands of sources have been detected. Aims. Recently, many improvements in the XMM-Newton data reduction algorithms have been made. These include enhanced source characterisation and reduced spurious source detections, refined astrometric precision of sources, greater net sensitivity for source detection, and the extraction of spectra and time series for fainter sources, both with better signal-to-noise. Thanks to these enhancements, the quality of the catalogue products has been much improved over earlier catalogues. Furthermore, almost 50% more observations are in the public domain compared to 2XMMi-DR3, allowing the XMM-Newton Survey Science Centre to produce a much larger and better quality X-ray source catalogue. Methods. The XMM-Newton Survey Science Centre has developed a pipeline to reduce the XMM-Newton data automatically. Using the latest version of this pipeline, along with better calibration, a new version of the catalogue has been produced, using XMM-Newton X-ray observations made public on or before 2013 December 31. Manual screening of all of the X-ray detections ensures the highest data quality. This catalogue is known as 3XMM. Results. In the latest release of the 3XMM catalogue, 3XMM-DR5, there are 565 962 X-ray detections comprising 396 910 unique X-ray sources. Spectra and lightcurves are provided for the 133 000 brightest sources. For all detections, the positions on the sky, a measure of the quality of the detection, and an evaluation of the X-ray variability is provided, along with the fluxes and count rates in 7 X-ray energy bands, the total 0.2-12 keV band counts, and four hardness ratios. With the aim of identifying the detections, a cross correlation with 228 catalogues of sources detected in all wavebands is also provided for each X-ray detection. Conclusions. 3XMM-DR5 is the largest X-ray source catalogue ever produced. Thanks to the large array of data products associated with each detection and each source, it is an excellent resource for finding new and extreme objects.Key words. catalogs -astronomical databases: miscellaneous -surveys -X-rays: general Based on observations obtained with XMM-Newton, an ESA science mission with instruments and contributions directly funded by ESA Member States and NASA.The catalogue is available at http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/ viz-bin/VizieR?-meta.foot&-source=IX/46

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Section: Source Detection Using the Empirical Point Spread Function (mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Source Detection Using the Empirical Point Spread Function (mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Other Corrections Related To the Psfmentioning

confidence: 99%

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TheXMM-Newtonserendipitous survey

Rosen

Webb

Watson

et al. 2016

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“…Ghizzardi (2002) studied 110 XMM-Newton observations to calibrate the EPIC-pn PSF and provided equations (based on the best-fit King profile) to calculate the 1-dimensional (1D) PSF profile (also see Costantini, Freyberg & Predehl 2005). Meanwhile, the 1D and 2D PSF profiles were modelled separately with a 1D King profile and a 2D ELLBETA model by the XMM-Newton calibration team (Read et al 2011), with the best-fit parameters given in the latest Current Calibration Files (CCF). However, it was noticed that the 2D ELLBETA model requires further calibration in the PSF wing (Schartel, private communication), while the CCF files only provide 1D PSF parameters for a discrete set of off-axis angles and energies, so we decided to adopt the Ghizzardi (2002) PSF which should be accurate enough for our study.…”

Section: Psf Of Xmm-newton Epic-pnmentioning

confidence: 99%

Probing the interstellar dust towards the Galactic Centre: dust-scattering halo around AX J1745.6−2901

Jin

Ponti

Haberl

et al. 2017

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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AX J1745.6-2901 is an X-ray binary located at only 1.45 arcmin from Sgr A ⋆ , showcasing a strong X-ray dust scattering halo. We combine Chandra and XMM-Newton observations to study the halo around this X-ray binary. Our study shows two major thick dust layers along the line of sight (LOS) towards AX J1745.6-2901. The LOS position and N H of these two layers depend on the dust grain models with different grain size distribution and abundances. But for all the 19 dust grain models considered, dust Layer-1 is consistently found to be within a fractional distance of 0.11 (mean value: 0.05) to AX J1745.6-2901 and contains only (19-34)% (mean value: 26%) of the total LOS dust. The remaining dust is contained in Layer-2, which is distributed from the Earth up to a mean fractional distance of 0.64. A significant separation between the two layers is found for all the dust grain models, with a mean fractional distance of 0.31. Besides, an extended wing component is discovered in the halo, which implies a higher fraction of dust grains with typical sizes 590Å than considered in current dust grain models. Assuming AX J1745.6-2901 is 8 kpc away, dust Layer-2 would be located in the Galactic disk several kpc away from the Galactic Centre (GC). The dust scattering halo biases the observed spectrum of AX J1745.6-2901 severely in both spectral shape and flux, and also introduces a strong dependence on the size of the instrumental point spread function and the source extraction region. We build Xspec models to account for this spectral bias, which allow us to recover the intrinsic spectrum of AX J1745.6-2901 free from dust scattering opacity. If dust Layer-2 also intervenes along the LOS to Sgr A ⋆ and other nearby GC sources, a significant spectral correction for the dust scattering opacity would be necessary for all these GC sources.

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“…We chose to use segment lengths 1/3 as long as our 12.75 hr observing intervals in order to closely match the timescale we used in our analysis in Section 4.1. We used 50% overlap as suggested by Press et al (2002). After applying Welch's method to each of our two 12.75 hr intervals, we combined the results to produce one average power spectrum.…”

Section: Power Spectrum Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

FAR INFRARED VARIABILITY OF SAGITTARIUS A: 25.5 hr OF MONITORING WITH HERSCHEL

Stone

Marrone

Dowell

et al. 2016

ApJ

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Variable emission from SgrA * , the luminous counterpart to the super-massive black hole at the center of our Galaxy, arises from the innermost portions of the accretion flow. Better characterization of the variability is important for constraining models of the low-luminosity accretion mode powering SgrA * , and could further our ability to use variable emission as a probe of the strong gravitational potential in the vicinity of the´ M 4 10 6 black hole. We use the Herschel Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver (SPIRE) to monitor SgrA * at wavelengths that are difficult or impossible to observe from the ground. We find highly significant variations at 0.25, 0.35, and 0.5 mm, with temporal structure that is highly correlated across these wavelengths. While the variations correspond to <1% changes in the total intensity in the Herschel beam containing SgrA * , comparison to independent, simultaneous observations at 0.85 mm strongly supports the reality of the variations. The lowest point in the light curves, ∼0.5 Jy below the time-averaged flux density, places a lower bound on the emission of SgrA * at 0.25 mm, the first such constraint on the THz portion of the spectral energy distribution. The variability on few hour timescales in the SPIRE light curves is similar to that seen in historical 1.3 mm data, where the longest time series is available, but the distribution of variations in the sub-mm do not show a tail of large-amplitude variations seen at 1.3 mm. Simultaneous X-ray photometry from XMM-Newton shows no significant variation within our observing period, which may explain the lack of very large submillimeter variations in our data if X-ray and submillimeter flares are correlated.

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A new comprehensive 2D model of the point spread functions of theXMM-NewtonEPIC telescopes: spurious source suppression and improved positional accuracy

Cited by 56 publications

References 7 publications

TheXMM-Newtonserendipitous survey

TheXMM-Newtonserendipitous survey

Probing the interstellar dust towards the Galactic Centre: dust-scattering halo around AX J1745.6−2901

FAR INFRARED VARIABILITY OF SAGITTARIUS A: 25.5 hr OF MONITORING WITH HERSCHEL

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A new comprehensive 2D model of the point spread functions of theXMM-NewtonEPIC telescopes: spurious source suppression and improved positional accuracy

Cited by 56 publications

References 7 publications

TheXMM-Newtonserendipitous survey

TheXMM-Newtonserendipitous survey

Probing the interstellar dust towards the Galactic Centre: dust-scattering halo around AX J1745.6−2901

FAR INFRARED VARIABILITY OF SAGITTARIUS A*: 25.5 hr OF MONITORING WITH HERSCHEL*

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FAR INFRARED VARIABILITY OF SAGITTARIUS A: 25.5 hr OF MONITORING WITH HERSCHEL