NGC 2264 Chandra X-Ray Point Source Catalog: 420 Stellar Objects

420 X-ray point sources were detected in a 100 ks Chandra ACIS observation of the 3 Myr old NGC 2264 star-forming region. The catalog correlates X-ray luminosities, temperatures, and absorptions with optical and near-infrared data for 85% of the sources, significantly increasing the known low-mass cluster population. The data was produced by researchers analyzing the observation with the PWDetect and XSPEC software.

Use Cases

• Correlating X-ray activity with stellar mass and bolometric luminosity based on the Lx/Lbol analysis described.
• Comparing X-ray emission characteristics between classical and weak-line T Tauri stars (CTTS vs. WTTS) as detailed in the description.
• Identifying potential protostellar objects among X-ray sources without optical/NIR counterparts.
• Modeling plasma temperatures and absorption column densities using the spectral fitting methodology for sources with >50 photons.

Strengths

• Contains 420 X-ray point sources detected above a 4.6-sigma significance threshold.
• 85% of sources have optical and near-infrared counterparts identified from literature, with over 90% argued to be NGC 2264 members.
• Spectral analysis performed for 199 sources with more than 50 detected photons using XSPEC models.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Analysis of a deep, 100 ks Chandra ACIS observation using PWDetect software and spectral fitting with XSPEC.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 19:35:04.066981; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Covers a 17' x 17' field in the NGC 2264 star-forming region.