posted on 2020-08-27, 10:48authored byPA Evans, KL Page, JP Osborne, AP Beardmore, R Willingale, DN Burrows, JA Kennea, M Perri, M Capalbi, G Tagliaferri, SB Cenko
We present the 2SXPS (Swift-XRT Point Source) catalog, containing 206,335
point sources detected by the Swift X-ray Telescope (XRT) in the 0.3--10 keV
energy range. This catalog represents a significant improvement over 1SXPS,
with double the sky coverage (now 3,790 deg$^2$), and several significant
developments in source detection and classification. In particular, we present
for the first time techniques to model the effect of stray light --
significantly reducing the number of spurious sources detected. These
techniques will be very important for future, large effective area X-ray
mission such as the forthcoming Athena X-ray observatory. We also present a new
model of the XRT point spread function, and a method for correctly localising
and characterising piled up sources. We provide light curves -- in four energy
bands, two hardness ratios and two binning timescales -- for every source, and
from these deduce that over 80,000 of the sources in 2SXPS are variable in at
least one band or hardness ratio. The catalog data can be queried or downloaded
via a bespoke web interface at https://www.swift.ac.uk/2SXPS, via HEASARC, or
in Vizier (IX/58).