Chandra Deep Field South: 740 X-ray Sources from 4-Megasecond Survey

The 4-megasecond Chandra Deep Field-South survey is the deepest X-ray survey to date, covering 464.5 arcmin². It contains a main catalog of 740 X-ray sources detected with high reliability, including 300 new sources not in the previous 2 Ms catalog. The catalog, provided by NASA, includes multiwavelength identifications, photometry, and redshifts for the majority of sources, with analysis indicating over 75% are active galactic nuclei.

Use Cases

• Studying the population and properties of active galactic nuclei based on X-ray source classifications.
• Analyzing the rise of normal and starburst galaxies at faint X-ray flux levels.
• Cross-matching X-ray sources with optical/infrared/radio counterparts using provided multiwavelength identifications.
• Investigating source density and completeness of deep X-ray surveys using the provided reliability and completeness metrics.

Strengths

• Contains 740 X-ray sources detected with high reliability, using a false-positive probability threshold of 10⁻⁵ and a binomial-probability source-selection criterion of P < 0.004.
• Provides multiwavelength counterparts for 716 (~97%) of the main-catalog sources, with redshifts for 673 (~94%) of those.
• Achieves a median positional uncertainty of ~0.42 arcseconds for source locations.
• Reaches on-axis flux limits of approximately 3.2 × 10⁻¹⁷ erg cm⁻² s⁻¹ (0.5–8 keV), enabling detection of very faint sources.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The supplementary catalog of 36 sources mentioned in the description is not included in this table.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Collection Method

Observations from the Chandra X-ray Observatory, processed with wavdetect and matched-filter techniques.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 17:20:53.606058; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Covers the Chandra Deep Field-South region, an area of 464.5 arcmin².