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The Role of Wide Field X-ray Surveys in Astronomy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 March 2015

Richard D. Saxton
Richard D. Saxton*
Affiliation:
Telespazio VEGA / XMM SOC, ESAC, Apartado 78, 28691 Villanueva de la Cañada, Madrid, Spain email: richard.saxton@sciops.esa.int
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Abstract

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We review the history of X-ray sky surveys from the early experiments to the catalogues of 105 sources produced by ROSAT, Chandra and XMM-Newton. At bright fluxes the X-ray sky is shared between stars, accreting binaries and extragalactic sources while deeper surveys are dominated by AGN and clusters of galaxies. The X-ray background, found by the earliest missions, has been largely resolved into discrete sources at soft (0.3-2 keV) energies but at higher energies an important fraction still escapes detection. The possible identification of the missing flux with Compton-thick AGN has been probed in recent years by Swift and Integral.

Variability seen in objects observed at different epochs has proved to be an excellent discriminator for rare classes of objects. The comparison of ROSAT All Sky Survey (RASS) and ROSAT pointed observations identified several Novae and high variability AGN as well as initiating the observational study of Tidal Disruption events. More recently the XMM-Newton slew survey, in conjunction with archival RASS data, has detected further examples of flaring objects which have been followed-up in near-real time at other wavelengths.

Keywords

X-rays: generalsurveys
Type
Contributed Papers
Information
Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union , Volume 10 , Highlights H16: Highlights of Astronomy , August 2012 , pp. 669 - 670
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2015 

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