Ask About the Chandra Source Catalog

The locations, in Galactic coordinates, of the CSC 2.0 detections. The size of each symbol is proportional to the logarithm of the number of sources detected in the stack, while the color encodes the number of closely-located observations.

Description

The Chandra X-ray Center is hosting Chandra Source Catalog Booth sessions at the American Astronomical Society Virtual meeting. We will have several Catalog scientists and technical staff available to answer questions and for discussion at designated times (when the Interactive Exhibit Halls as open) with interested attendees of the AAS 237 meeting.

Chandra Source Catalog Overview

The Chandra Source Catalog (CSC) is the definitive catalog of X-ray sources detected by the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Version 2.0 (CSC2) is the second major release of the catalog, and includes measured properties for 317,167 unique compact and extended X-ray sources in the sky, allowing statistical analysis of large samples, as well as individual source studies. Extracted properties are provided for 928,280 individual observation detections identified in 10,382 Chandra ACIS and HRC-I imaging observations released publicly through the end of 2014. CSC 2.0 also includes—as an "alpha" release—photometric properties for 1,299 highly extended (≳30″) sources, together with surface brightness polygons for several contour levels. There are approximately 1,700 columns of tabular data with pertinent information about each source across 5 bands (broad, hard, medium, soft, and ultra-soft) for ACIS and 1 band (wide) for HRC (see the energy-bands page for the definition of these bands), and 40 data products per source. The total size of the archive is close to 36 TB.