MAXI/GSC 37-Month High Galactic-Latitude X-Ray Source Catalog

NASA HEASARC's 37-Month MAXI/GSC catalog contains 500 high Galactic-latitude X-ray sources detected with significances >= 7 in the 4-10 keV band. The catalog was created in September 2013 based on data from the Monitor of All-sky X-ray Image/Gas Slit Camera mission. It includes source positions, detection significances, fluxes, hardness ratios, and likely counterpart information for 296 sources.

Use Cases

• Cross-matching X-ray sources with other catalogs (e.g., Swift/BAT, MCXC) based on the provided source positions and counterpart information.
• Analyzing source population statistics and sky distributions based on the catalog's 500 detected objects.
• Studying spectral properties of X-ray sources using the provided fluxes in the 4-10 keV and 3-4 keV bands and hardness ratios.
• Evaluating survey sensitivity and completeness for all-sky X-ray missions based on the described limiting sensitivity of ~7.5e-12 erg cm^-2 s^-1.

Strengths

• Contains 500 X-ray sources detected with high significance (>= 7 sigma) in the 4-10 keV band.
• Achieves a high limiting sensitivity of ~7.5e-12 erg cm^-2 s^-1 (~0.6 mCrab) for 50% of the survey area.
• Provides likely counterpart information for 296 of the 500 sources, aiding in identification.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is known (500), but specific column definitions and data formats are unknown from the metadata.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA HEASARC)

Collection Method

Source detection via image fits with a Poisson likelihood algorithm on data from the MAXI/GSC instrument.

Time Range

First 37 months of MAXI/GSC data accumulation.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 17:42:46.588063; freshness should be verified as the underlying data is from 2013.

Geography

All-sky survey with focus on high Galactic latitudes (|b| > 10 degrees).