The 1st year of the Swift SMC Survey (S-CUBED) Virtual Observatory Resource

Authors
  1. Kennea J.A.
  2. Coe M.J.
  3. Evans P.A.
  4. Waters J.
  5. Jasko R.E.
  6. Published by
    CDS
Abstract

The Swift Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) Survey, S-CUBED, is a high-cadence shallow X-ray survey of the SMC. The survey consists of 142 tiled pointings covering the optical extent of the SMC, which is performed weekly by NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, with an exposure per tile of 60s. The survey is focused on discovery and monitoring of X-ray outbursts from the large known and unknown population of Be/X-ray binaries (BeXRBs) in the SMC. Given the very low background of Swift's X-ray telescope, even with a short exposure per tile, S-CUBED is typically sensitive to outbursts in the SMC at >1%-2% Eddington luminosity for a typical 1.4M_{sun}_ neutron star compact object. This sensitivity, combined with the high cadence and the fact that the survey can be performed all year round, makes it a powerful discovery tool for outbursting accreting X-ray pulsars in the SMC. In this paper we describe results from the first year of observations of S-CUBED, which includes the 1SCUBEDX catalog of 265 X-ray sources, 160 of which are not identified with any previously cataloged X-ray source. We report on bulk properties of sources in the 1SCUBEDX catalog. Finally, we focus on results of S-CUBED observations of several interesting sources, which includes discovery of three Type II outbursts from BeXRBs and the detection of Type I outbursts and orbital periods in six BeXRB systems.

Keywords
  1. x-ray-sources
  2. astronomical-object-identification
  3. surveys
  4. magellanic-clouds
Bibliographic source Bibcode
2018ApJ...868...47K
See also HTML
https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/ApJ/868/47
IVOA Identifier IVOID
ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/868/47
Document Object Identifer DOI
doi:10.26093/cds/vizier.18680047

Access

Web browser access HTML
http://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJ/868/47
https://vizier.iucaa.in/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJ/868/47
http://vizieridia.saao.ac.za/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJ/868/47
IVOA Table Access TAP
http://tapvizier.cds.unistra.fr/TAPVizieR/tap
Run SQL-like queries with TAP-enabled clients (e.g., TOPCAT).
IVOA Cone Search SCS
For use with a cone search client (e.g., TOPCAT).
http://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/conesearch/J/ApJ/868/47/table2?
https://vizier.iucaa.in/viz-bin/conesearch/J/ApJ/868/47/table2?
http://vizieridia.saao.ac.za/viz-bin/conesearch/J/ApJ/868/47/table2?

History

2019-11-20T09:24:12Z
Resource record created
2019-11-20T08:49:34Z
Updated
2019-11-20T09:24:12Z
Created

Contact

Name
CDS support team
Postal Address
CDS, Observatoire de Strasbourg, 11 rue de l'Universite, F-67000 Strasbourg, France
E-Mail
cds-question@unistra.fr