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Description
Mechanisms regulating the origin of X-rays in young stellar objects and the correlation with their evolutionary stage are under debate. Studies of the X-ray properties in young clusters allow us to understand these mechanisms. One ideal target for this analysis is the Eagle Nebula (M 16), with its central cluster NGC 6611. At 1750 pc from the Sun, it harbors 93 OB stars, together with a population of low-mass stars from embedded protostars to disk-less Class III objects, with age <= 3 Myr. The authors study an archival 78 ks Chandra/ACIS-I observation of NGC 6611 and two new 80-ks observations of the outer region of M 16, one centered on the Column V and the other on a region of the molecular cloud with ongoing star formation. They detect 1755 point sources with 1183 candidate cluster members (219 disk-bearing and 964 disk-less), studying the global X-ray properties of M 16 and comparing them with those of the Orion Nebula Cluster. The authors also compare the level of X-ray emission of Class II and Class III stars and analyze the X-ray spectral properties of OB stars. Their study supports the lower level of X-ray activity for the disk-bearing stars with respect to the disk-less members. The X-ray luminosity function (XLF) of M 16 is similar to that of Orion, supporting the universality of the XLF in young clusters. Eighty-five percent of the O-type stars of NGC 6611 have been detected in X-rays. With only one possible exception, they show soft spectra with no hard components, indicating that mechanisms for the production of hard X-ray emission in O stars are not operating in NGC 6611. The determination of the absorption corrected X-ray luminosity (L<sub>X</sub>), as well as the plasma temperature (kT) and hydrogen column density (N<sub>H</sub>), requires the analysis of the X-ray spectra. The authors fit the observed spectra with thermal plasma (with both one and two temperatures) and power-law models. They use the APEC ionization-equilibrium thermal plasma code, assuming the sub-solar elemental abundances of Maggio et al. (2007, APJ, 660, 1462). The absorption was treated using the WABS model. The one-temperature (1T) thermal model was applied to all the sources with more than 25 counts, while the two-temperature (2T) thermal model was applied to each source with more than 80 counts. The power-law model has been applied to those sources with hard spectra for which the best-fit thermal model predicts a plasma temperature kT > 5 keV. When more than one model has been used for a given source, the authors chose the best model by the chi-squared probability and visual inspection of the spectrum. This table contains a description of the X-ray properties of 1754 sources (one less than stated in the abstract of the reference paper) derived from three Chandra/ACIS-I observations, together with a source classification based on the optical and infrared properties of each source. Data come from three ACIS-I observations (central or 'c', east or 'e', and north-east or 'ne') and many values are not averaged but presented for each observation as indicated by the parameter prefixes 'c_', 'e_', and 'ne_', respectively. Source detection has been performed with PWDetect, adopting a threshold corresponding to 10 spurious detections. The HEASARC eliminated the 3 parameters describing the plasma temperature of the second spectral component and its associated negative and positive errors for sources in the north-east observation, as these were blank for all entries in the original table as obtained from the CDS. This table was created by the HEASARC in March 2013 based on the <a href="https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/ftp/cats/J/ApJ/753/117">CDS Catalog J/ApJ/753/117</a> file xraycat.dat. Some of the values for the alt_name parameter in the HEASARC's implementation of this table were corrected in April 2018. This is a service provided by NASA HEASARC .
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