Galactic Center Chandra X-Ray Point Source Catalog

This table contains a catalog of 9017 X-ray sources identified in Chandra observations of a 2 degrees by 0.8 degrees field around the Galactic center. This enlarges the number of known X-ray sources in the region by a factor of 2.5. The catalog incorporates all of the ACIS-I observations as of 2007 August, which total 2.25 Ms of exposure. At the distance to the Galactic center (8 kpc), we are sensitive to sources with luminosities of 4 x 10&lt;sup&gt;32&lt;/sup&gt; erg s&lt;sup&gt;-1&lt;/sup&gt; (0.5-8.0 keV; 90% confidence) over an area of 1 degree&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;, and up to an order of magnitude more sensitive in the deepest exposure (1.0 Ms) around Sgr A*. The positions of 60% of the sources are accurate to &lt;1 arcsecond (95% confidence), and 20% have positions accurate to &lt;0.5 arcsec. The authors search for variable sources, and find that 3% exhibit flux variations within an observation, and 10% exhibit variations from observation-to-observation. They also find one source, CXOUGC J174622.7-285218, with a periodic 1745 s signal (1.4% chance probability), which is probably a magnetically accreting cataclysmic variable. The authors compare the spatial distribution of X-ray sources to a model for the stellar distribution, and find 2.8 sigma evidence for excesses in the numbers of X-ray sources in the region of recent star formation encompassed by the Arches, Quintuplet, and Galactic center star clusters. These excess sources are also seen in the luminosity distribution of the X-ray sources, which is flatter near the Arches and Quintuplet than elsewhere in the field. These excess point sources, along with a similar longitudinal asymmetry in the distribution of diffuse iron emission that has been reported by other authors, probably have their origin in the young stars that are prominent at a galactic lonitude ~ 0.1 degrees. This tables was designed to be inclusive, so sources of questionable quality are included, according to the authors. For instance, 134 sources have net numbers of counts in the 0.5-8.0 keV band that are consistent with 0 at the 90% confidence level. These sources are only detected in a single band and are presumably either very hard or very soft, detected in single observations because they were transients, or detected in stacked observations with wvdecomp at marginal significance. The authors have chosen to include them because they passed the test based on Poisson statistics from Weisskopf et al. (2007, ApJ, 657, 1026). The observations which were used to generate the source list herein tabulated are listed in Table 1 of the reference paper. This HEASARC table GALCENCXO supercedes and replaces the previous HEASARC tables CHANGALCEN and CHANC150PC, which were based on Muno et al. (2003, ApJ, 589, 225) and Muno et al. (2006, ApJS, 165, 173), respectively. This table was created by the HEASARC in March 2009 based on the machine-readable versions of Table 2, 3 and 4 from the paper which were obtained from the electronic ApJ website. The information on short-term variability given in Table 5 of the reference paper was not included in this HEASARC table, notice. This is a service provided by NASA HEASARC .

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Organization: National Aeronautics and Space Administration