XMM-Newton Users Handbook

A..3.1 2XMMi-DR3 and 3XMM

New XMM-Newton catalogues are created on a regular basis. The latest (fifth) XMM-Newton EPIC Serendipitous Source Catalogue - 2XMMi-DR3 - released in April 2010, contains $\sim$ 353,000 detections ($\simeq$262,000 unique sources) drawn from 4953 XMM-Newton observations that were public by October 31st 2009 and covers a unique sky area of $\sim$ 504 square degrees. 2XMMi-DR3 is an increment on the preceding 2XMMi catalogue, adding a further 1 and a half years of public data which had undergone almost identical processing to that used for 2XMM and 2XMMi. Typical sensitives in the 2XMMi-DR3 catalogue are $6 \times 10^{-15}$ and $1.5 \times 10^{-14}$ erg cm$^{-2}$ s$^{-1}$ in the soft and hard X-ray bands, respectively. XMM-Newton observers may find the 2XMMi-DR3 catalogue useful in planning new observation proposals. Further details of each XMM-Newton EPIC catalogue, including available formats, access methods and the Catalogue User Guides, are available through links from the Catalogues home page, at: http://xmmssc-www.star.le.ac.uk/Catalogue/. A paper describing the 2XMM catalogue is available (Watson et al., 2009, A&A, 493, 339).

The catalogue can also be retrieved from the XMM-Newton Science Archive web page in FITS or CSV format and is fully accessible through XMM-Newton Science Archive user interface.

Other useful interfaces to the 2XMMi-DR3 catalogue include LEDAS, e.g.,
http://www.ledas.ac.uk/arnie5/arnie5.php?action=basic&catname=2xmmidr3,
the XCAT-DB at
http://amwdb.u-strasbg.fr/2xmmidr3,
which is particularly useful for exploring correlations with other catalogues.

As noted in section A.1, the SSC expects to perform a bulk reprocessing of all XMM data obtained up to around July 2012. This bulk reprocessing will also exploit a number of scientifically-driven enhancements to the processing scheme and improved calibration information, and will form the basis of a new XMM-Newton X-ray catalogue, 3XMM. The 3XMM catalogue is expected to be released in early 2013 and will contain around 40% more detections than 2XMMi-DR3 and nearly twice as many detections as 2XMM.