|
Description
High-Mass X-ray Binaries (HMXBs) are a particular class of high-energy sources which require multi-wavelength observational efforts to be properly characterized. New identifications and refinement of previous measurements are regularly published in the literature by independent teams of researchers and could, once collected in a catalog, offer a tool to facilitate further studies on HMXBs. The authors aim to update on previous instances of catalogs of HMXBs in the Galaxy, and provide the community easy access to the most complete set of observables on Galactic HMXBs. On top of the fixed version that is available in VizieR, they also aim to host and maintain a dynamic version that can be updated upon request from users, and where any modification will be logged. Using previous catalogs of HMXBs supplemented by listings of hard X-ray sources detected in the past 20 years, the authors produce a base set of HMXBs and candidates by means of identifier and sky coordinate cross-matches. They query SIMBAD for unreferenced HMXBs. They search for as many hard X-ray, soft X-ray, optical and infrared counterparts to the HMXBs as we can in well-known catalogs and compile their coordinates. Each HMXB is subject to a meticulous search in the literature to find relevant measurements and their original reference. The authors provide a catalog of HMXBs in the Galaxy with their best known coordinates, companion star spectral type, systemic radial velocities, component masses, orbital period, eccentricity and spin period when available. This catalog also provides the coordinates and identifiers for each counterpart found from hard X-rays to near-infrared, including counterparts from the recent Gaia DR3 catalog. This catalog was created from data-mining the published literature. It takes into account information available through 2022. Values for binary parameters are joined with a reference in which the value was derived. Position data for which the authors have manually found a counterpart also have a specific reference; if not, then the data comes directly from the corresponding catalog. This database table was first created by the HEASARC in October 2023, based on the 2023-09 version of this catalog, found from the <a href="https://binary-revolution.github.io/HMXBwebcat/">Binary rEvolution website</a>. It is automatically updated in the HEASARC database within a few days of a new version being released on that website. This is a service provided by NASA HEASARC .
|
