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Resource Record Summary

Catalog Service:
Swift-XRT Point Source Catalog (2SXPS)

Short name: SWIFT2SXPS
IVOA Identifier: ivo://nasa.heasarc/swift2sxpsPublisher: NASA/GSFC HEASARCivo://nasa.heasarc/ASD[Pub. ID]
More Info: https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/W3Browse/all/swift2sxps.html
VO Compliance: Level 2: This is a VO-compliant resource.
Status: active
Registered: 2025 Mar 07 00:00:00Z
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Description


This table contains the second Swift X-ray Point Source (2SXPS) catalog of detections by the Swift X-ray Telescope (XRT) used in Photon Counting (PC) mode in the 0.3-10 keV energy range. Swift is a NASA mission with international participation dedicated to the gamma-ray burst study. It carries three instruments. The BAT is the large field-of-view instrument and operates in the 10-300 keV energy band; and two narrow field instruments, XRT and UVOT, that operate in the X-ray and UV/optical regime, respectively. The overall 2SXPS catalog characteristics are as follows: <pre> Data included 2005 Jan 01 - 2018 August 01 Sky coverage 3,790 square degrees Typical Sensitivity (0.3-10 keV) 2x10<sup>-13</sup> erg cm<sup>-2</sup> s<sup>-1</sup> (observations) 4x10<sup>-14</sup> erg cm<sup>-2</sup> s<sup>-1</sup> (stacked images) Typical position error 5.6" (90% confidence radius, including systematics) Detections 1,091,058 Unique sources 206,335 Variable sources 82,324 Uncatalogued sources 78,100 False positive rate Flag=Good 0.3% Flag=Good/Reasonable 1% Flag=Good/Reasonable/Poor <10% </pre> This catalog enhances the 1SXPS catalogue (Evans, P. A., et al. 2014, ApJS, 210, 8) in different ways. The 2SXPS catalog uses an improved Point Spread Function (PSF) and pile-up models, a better source detection pipeline that includes a technique to model the effects of stray light, and tests to automatically avoid diffuse emission and ~six years more data. The results are that the 2SXPS catalog contains 50% more temporal coverage than 1SXPS, a sky coverage of 3790 square deg almost double compare to the 1SXPS (1905 square Degree) and ~30% more sources compared to the 1SXPS. The Swift XRT observations were filtered to remove times when: a) data were contaminated by scattered light from the daylight side of the Earth; b) the on-board astrometry derived from the images obtained by the Swift UV/Optical telescope was unreliable; and c) observations with less than 100s of PC mode. The 127519 observations included in the catalog provide a total usable exposure is 266.5 Ms. A Swift observation is a collection of snapshots and the source detection algorithm was run on individual observation as well as on stacked images. The latter were generated on a grid of 2,300x2,300 pixels (~ 90'x90') to ensure that every overlap between observations is in at least one stacked image. A total of 14628 stacked images were generated. Each record corresponds to a unique source which characteristics are described with 230 parameters. The catalog reports for each source rates in four energy band (0.3-10.keV, 0.3-1. keV, 1-2 keV and 3-10 keV), background rates, variability for each energy band, two hardness ratio, peak rate and several spectral parameters. The hardness ratios are defined as follows: <pre> HR1 = (M-S)/(M+S) where M and S are the medium (1-2 keV) and soft (0.3-1 keV) band count rates HR2 = (H-M)/(H+M) where H and M are the hard (2-10 keV) and medium (1-2 keV) band count rates </pre> and they are calculated using all observations. The peak rate is determined using three different timescale: the count rate considering all the observations (see parameters rates in this database), the count rate in each observation (not reported in this database) and the count rate in each snapshot (not reported in this database). The peak rate is the rate +/- error from the timescale which has the highest 1-sigma lower-limit on the count rate. Spectral parameters and source flux are estimated using three different methods for two spectral models, a power-law and APEC (see Smith et al., 2001, ApJL, 556, L91). Not all sources have values for all three methods. The parameters starting with "fix" are defined for every source and uses fixed spectral model parameters: a photon index of 1.7 for a power-law model, a temperature of kT=1keV for the APEC model and for both models uses the Galactic absorption listed in the parameter "nh". The parameters starting "intr" have been inferred from the hardness ratio. Look-up tables containing (HR1, HR2, NH, photon index) and (HR1, HR2, NH, kT) are pre-calculated for the power-law and APEC models. If the source HR1 and HR2 are close to the values in the table, spectral parameters are derived by interpolating the HR1 and HR2 in the look-up tables that are close to the HR1 and HR2 of the source. The parameters starting with "fit" have been derived from fitting an actual source spectrum in XSPEC and they are only available for the brightest sources (>50 net counts, and at least one detection in a single observation). The parameters fields starting with "pow" and "apec" report the values from the 'best' of these methods. The parameters "which_pow" and "which_apec" indicates which of the three methods are reported. The catalog also includes flags derived from the cross-correlated with other source catalogs. The catalogs and their reference sources are as follows: <pre> * AllWISE: <a href="https://wise2.ipac.caltech.edu/docs/release/allwise/">https://wise2.ipac.caltech.edu/docs/release/allwise/</a> * ROSAT HRI: <a href="https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/rosat/rra/RRA.html">https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/rosat/rra/RRA.html</a> * SDSS Quasar Catalog DR14: Paris et al., 2018, A&A, 613, 51 (<a href="https://www.sdss.org/dr14/algorithms/qso_catalog/">https://www.sdss.org/dr14/algorithms/qso_catalog/</a>) * 2MASS: Skrutskie et al., 2006, AJ, 131, 1163 * 2CSC: accessed via the CSCView Tool at <a href="https://cxc.harvard.edu/csc/about.html">https://cxc.harvard.edu/csc/about.html</a> (1CSC paper: Evans et al., 2010, ApJS, 189, 37) * 1SWXRT: Evans et al., 2014, ApJS, 210,8 * 1SXPS: D'Elia et al., 2013, A&A, 551, 142 * 2RXS: Boller et al., 2016, A&A, 588, 103 * 3XMM-DR8: <a href="http://xmmssc.irap.omp.eu/Catalogue/3XMM-DR8/3XMM_DR8.html">http://xmmssc.irap.omp.eu/Catalogue/3XMM-DR8/3XMM_DR8.html</a> (3XMM paper: Rosen, Webb, Watson et al., 2016, A&A, 590, 1) * 3XMM Stack: Traulsen et al., 2019, A&A, 642, 77 * SwiftFT: Puccetti et al. 2011, A&A,528, A122 * XMM SL2: Saxton et al., 2008, A&A 480, 611 * XRTGRB: Evans et al, 2009, MNRAS, 397, 1177 (<a href="https://www.swift.ac.uk/xrt_positions">https://www.swift.ac.uk/xrt_positions</a>) * USNOB1: Monet et al., 2003, AJ, 125, 984 </pre> The 2SXPS paper (Evans et al. 2020 ApJS, 247,54) describes in detail the methodology of stacking images, background modeling, point spread function mapping, stray light detection and corrections, data filtering techniques and processing. The 2SXPS catalog has a dedicated website at <a href="https://www.swift.ac.uk/2SXPS">https://www.swift.ac.uk/2SXPS</a>. This database table was created by the HEASARC in November 20201 based on the electronic version delivered to the HEASARC by the Leicester University. The catalog has a dedicated website at <a href="https://www.swift.ac.uk/2SXPS">https://www.swift.ac.uk/2SXPS</a>. The version available from the HEASARC corresponds to the catalog designated as "All" on the Leicester website. This is a service provided by NASA HEASARC .

More About this Resource

About the Resource Providers

This section describes who is responsible for this resource

Publisher: NASA/GSFC HEASARCivo://nasa.heasarc/ASD[Pub. ID]

Creator: Evans et al. Contributor:

Contact Information:
X NASA/GSFC HEASARC help desk
Email:

Status of This Resource

This section provides some status information: the resource version, availability, and relevant dates.

Version: n/a
Availability: This is an active resource.
  • This service apparently provides only public data
Relevant dates for this Resource:
  • Representative: 2025 Mar 07

This resource was registered on: 2025 Mar 07 00:00:00Z
This resource description was last updated on: 2025 Mar 07 00:00:00Z

What This Resource is About

This section describes what the resource is, what it contains, and how it might be relevant.

Resource Class: CatalogService
This resource is a service that provides access to catalog data. You can extract data from the catalog by issuing a query, and the matching data is returned as a table.
Resource type keywords:
  • Catalog
Subject keywords:
  • Survey Source
This service provides data from:
  • facility: SWIFT
Intended audience or use:
  • Research: This resource provides information appropriate for supporting scientific research.
More Info: https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/W3Browse/all/swift2sxps.html Literature Reference: 2020ApJS..247...54E

Related Resources:

Services that provide access to data in this resource:
HEASARC TAP ivo://nasa.heasarc/services/xamin [Res. ID]

Data Coverage Information

This section describes the data's coverage over the sky, frequency, and time.

Reference Coordinate System: UTC-ICRS-TOPOXXivo://STClib/CoordSys#UTC-ICRS-TOPO[Res. ID]

Sky Coverage: Regions covered:

  • All-sky: The data from this resource is distributed over the entire sky.
Typical Size Scale (Region of Regard): , 0.0166666666666667 deg

Wavebands covered:

  • X-ray

Available Service Interfaces

Simple Cone SearchXXSearch Me

This is a standard IVOA service that takes as input a position in the sky and a radius and returns catalog records with positions within that radius.

VO Compliance: Level 2: This is a VO-compliant resource.
Available endpoints for the standard interface:
  • https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/xamin/vo/cone?showoffsets&table=swift2sxps&
Maximum search radius accepted: 180 degrees
Maximum number of matching records returned: 99999
This service supports the VERB input parameter:
Use VERB=1 to minimize the returned columns or VERB=3 to maximize.
Table Access Protocol - Auxiliary ServiceXX

This is a standard IVOA service that takes as input an ADQL or PQL query and returns tabular data.

VO Compliance: Level 2: This is a VO-compliant resource.
Available endpoints for the standard interface:
  • https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/xamin/vo/tap
Custom Service

This is service that does not comply with any IVOA standard but instead provides access to special capabilities specific to this resource.

VO Compliance: Level 2: This is a VO-compliant resource.
Available endpoints for this service interface:
  • URL-based interface: https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/W3Browse/getvotable.pl?name=swift2sxps
Custom Service

This is service that does not comply with any IVOA standard but instead provides access to special capabilities specific to this resource.

VO Compliance: Level 2: This is a VO-compliant resource.
Available endpoints for this service interface:


Developed with the support of the National Science Foundation
under Cooperative Agreement AST0122449 with the Johns Hopkins University
The NAVO project is a member of the International Virtual Observatory Alliance

This NAVO Application is hosted by the Space Telescope Science Institute

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