The Chandra Source Catalog Release 2 Series

Abstract

The Chandra Source Catalog (CSC) is a virtual X-ray astrophysics facility that enables both detailed individual source studies and statistical studies of large samples of X-ray sources detected in Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer and High Resolution Camera-I imaging observations obtained by the Chandra X-ray Observatory. The catalog provides carefully curated, high-quality, and uniformly calibrated and analyzed tabulated positional, spatial, photometric, spectral, and temporal source properties, as well as science-ready X-ray data products. The latter includes multiple types of source- and field-based FITS format products that can be used as a basis for further research, significantly simplifying follow-up analysis of scientifically meaningful source samples. We discuss in detail the algorithms used for the CSC Release 2 Series, including CSC 2.0, which includes 317,167 unique X-ray sources on the sky identified in observations released publicly through the end of 2014, and CSC 2.1, which adds Chandra data released through the end of 2021 and expands the catalog to 407,806 sources. Besides adding more recent observations, the CSC Release 2 Series includes multiple algorithmic enhancements that provide significant improvements over earlier releases. The compact source sensitivity limit for most observations is ∼5 photons over most of the field of view, which is ∼2× fainter than Release 1, achieved by coadding observations and using an optimized source detection approach. A Bayesian X-ray aperture photometry code produces robust fluxes even in crowded fields and for low-count sources. The current release, CSC 2.1, is tied to the Gaia-CRF3 astrometric reference frame for the best sky positions for catalog sources.