Is there a reason for not just using the ``Table.read`` interface here since we are in the ``Table`` package? The following works:

```
from astropy.table import Table
xray = Table.read("""   name    obs_date    logLx
                        NGC3516 2011-11-11  42.1
                        M31     1999-01-05  43.1
                        M82     2012-10-29  45.0""", format='ascii')
```