Abstract

Invited Talk - Plenary

Searching for hidden X-ray treasures in XMM-Newton data

Iris Traulsen
AIP

X-ray observations open a window on the high-energy processes in the Universe. The European X-ray telescope XMM-Newton has become ESA's longest operated mission in space and taken more than 17,000 pointed observations so far. Thanks to a large field of view, each observation covers a dozen to a few hundred X-ray sources in addition to the main target. An international team develops the software to analyse these data and processes source catalogues from all public observations. At AIP, we provide the software packages to search for serendipitously observed X-ray sources, and we develop and compile the source catalogue from overlapping observations, which allows for discoveries of faint X-ray emitters in repeatedly observed sky patches and for tracking of long-term variability. Currently, we are preparing for the next generation of XMM-Newton source catalogues. This talk will present aspects of working between community support and research, and the celestial objects we are dealing with.