ChIcAGO Survey Chandra X-Ray Source Catalog

This table contains results from the &#39;Chasing the Identification of ASCA Galactic Objects&#39; (ChIcAGO) survey, which is designed to identify the unknown X-ray sources discovered during the ASCA Galactic Plane Survey (AGPS). Little is known about most of the AGPS sources, especially those that emit primarily in hard X-rays (2-10 keV) within the X-ray flux range from ~ 10&lt;sup&gt;-13&lt;/sup&gt; to 10&lt;sup&gt;-11&lt;/sup&gt; erg cm&lt;sup&gt;-2&lt;/sup&gt; s&lt;sup&gt;-1&lt;/sup&gt;. In ChIcAGO, the sub-arcsecond localization capabilities of Chandra have been combined with a detailed multi-wavelength follow-up program, with the ultimate goal of classifying the &gt; 100 unidentified sources in the AGPS. Overall to date, 93 unidentified AGPS sources have been observed with Chandra as part of the ChIcAGO survey. A total of 253 X-ray point sources have been detected in these Chandra observations within 3 arcminutes of the original ASCA positions. The authors have identified infrared and optical counterparts to the majority of these sources, using both new observations and catalogs from existing Galactic plane surveys. X-ray and infrared population statistics for the X-ray point sources detected in the Chandra observations reveal that the primary populations of Galactic plane X-ray sources that emit in the X-ray flux range from ~ 10&lt;sup&gt;-13&lt;/sup&gt; to 10&lt;sup&gt;-11&lt;/sup&gt; erg cm&lt;sup&gt;-2&lt;/sup&gt; s&lt;sup&gt;-1&lt;/sup&gt; are active stellar coronae, massive stars with strong stellar winds that are possibly in colliding wind binaries, X-ray binaries, and magnetars. There is also another primary population that is still unidentified but, on the basis of its X-ray and infrared properties, likely comprises partly Galactic sources and partly active galactic nuclei. A total of 93 AGPS sources have been observed with Chandra as part of the ChIcAGO survey, of which 84 were imaged with ACIS-S and 9 were imaged with HRC-I. The ChIcAGO Chandra observations took place over a 3.5 yr period, from 2007 January to 2010 July. The Chandra exposure times ranged from ~ 1 to 10 ks. All the details of these Chandra observations are listed in Table 1 of the reference paper. The initial automated analysis of these Chandra observations was conducted using the ChIcAGO Multi-wavelength Analysis Pipeline (MAP), described in Section 2.2 of the reference paper. ChIcAGO MAP takes the ACIS-S or HRC-I Chandra observation of an AGPS source field and detects and analyzes all point sources within 3 arcminutes, equivalent to the largest likely position error, for the original AGPS source positions supplied by Sugizaki et al. (2001, ApJS, 134, 77). The authors then performed a more detailed X-ray analysis and counterpart study for those 74 sources with &gt; 20 X-ray counts, as such sources are approximately within the original AGPS sources X-ray flux range (see Sections 3.2 and 3.3 of the reference paper). Infrared and optical follow-up were primarily performed on those ChIcAGO sources having &gt; 20 X-ray counts. In order to determine which optical and infrared sources are counterparts to ChIcAGO sources, the authors used a technique similar to that described by Zhao et al. (2005, ApJS, 161, 429), using their Equation (11). If the separation between a ChIcAGO source&#39;s wavdetect position and its possible counterpart is less than the quadratic sum of their 3-sigma positional errors and the 3-sigma Chandra pointing error, then the X-ray and optical (or infrared) sources are likely to be associated. The 1-sigma positional errors for all sources in the 2MASS PSC and GLIMPSE catalogs are 0.1 arcseconds and 0.3 arcseconds, respectively. USNO B has an astrometric accuracy of &lt; 0.25 arcseconds. The authors have assumed that the error distributions of the Chandra observations, Chandra pointing, and USNO B Catalog are all Gaussian for the purposes of identifying possible counterparts to the ChIcAGO sources. This table was created by the HEASARC in June 2014 based on electronic versions of Tables 1, 2 and 12 from the reference paper which were obtained from the ApJS website. This is a service provided by NASA HEASARC .

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Organization: National Aeronautics and Space Administration