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M 37 Chandra X-Ray Point Source Catalog

Metadata Updated: September 19, 2025

Empirical calibrations of the stellar age-rotation-activity relation (ARAR) rely on observations of the co-eval populations of stars in open clusters. The authors used the Chandra X-ray Observatory to study M 37 (NGC 2099), a 500-Myr-old open cluster that has been extensively surveyed for rotation periods (P<sub>rot</sub>). M 37 was observed almost continuously for five days, for a total of 440.5 ks, to measure stellar X-ray luminosities (L<sub>X</sub>), a proxy for coronal activity, across a wide range of masses. The cluster's membership catalog was revisited to calculate updated membership probabilities from photometric data and each star's distance to the cluster center. The result is a comprehensive sample of 1699 M 37 members: 426 with P<sub>rot</sub>, 278 with X-ray detections, and 76 with both. The authors calculate Rossby numbers, R<sub>o</sub>= P<sub>rot</sub>/tau , where tau is the convective turnover time, and ratios of the X-ray-to-bolometric luminosity, L<sub>X</sub>/L<sub>bol</sub>, to minimize mass dependencies in their characterization of the rotation-coronal activity relation at 500 Myr. They find that fast rotators, for which R<sub>o</sub> < 0.09 +/- 0.01, show saturated levels of activity, with log(L<sub>X</sub>/L<sub>bol</sub>) = -3.06 +/- 0.04. For R<sub>o</sub> >= 0.09 +/- 0.01, activity is unsaturated and follows a power law of the form R<sup>beta</sup><sub>o</sub> , where beta = -2.03 (-0.14, +0.17). This is the largest sample available for analyzing the dependence of coronal emission on rotation for a single-aged population, covering stellar masses in the range 0.4 - 1.3 solar masses, P<sub>rot</sub> in the range 0.4 - 12.8 days, and L<sub>X</sub> in the range 10<sup>28.4</sup> - 10<sup>30.5</sup> erg s<sup>-1</sup>. These results make M 37 a new benchmark open cluster for calibrating the ARAR at ages of ~ 500 Myr. The central field of M 37 was observed five separate times between 2011 November 14 20:58 and 2011 November 1915:31 UTC for a total of 440.5 ks with the Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS). The four ACIS-I chips and the ACIS-S3 chip were used in Very Faint telemetry mode to improve the screening of background events and thus increase the sensitivity of ACIS to faint sources. The exposure-weighted average aimpoint of the 16.9 x 16.9 arcmin<sup>2</sup> ACIS-I field of view is RA = 05<sup>h</sup> 52<sup>m</sup> 17.86<sup>s</sup>,Dec = +32<sup>o</sup> 33' 48.23" (J2000). The pitch angle for four observations was 103 degrees; due to scheduling constraints, it was 253 degrees for the fifth. Table 1 in the reference paper provides the basic information for the 5 Chandra observations and Figure 1 in that paper shows their footprints superimposed on a 40' x 40' i' image centered on M 37 obtained by Hartman et al. (2008, ApJ, 675, 1233, hereafter HA08) with the Megacam on the MMT telescope. This HEASARC table contains all of the data from Table 3 of the reference paper, the M 37 Chandra catalog of 774 X-ray sources, and the data from Table 5, the catalog of optical objects, for those objects which have been identified as optical counterparts to the X-ray sources. It does not contain entries for those optical objects in Table 5 which lack X-ray counterparts. This online catalog was created by the HEASARC in December 2015 based on machine-readable versions of tables 3 and 5 from the paper which were obtained from the ApJ website. This is a service provided by NASA HEASARC .

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

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Dates

Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date September 19, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from NASA Data.json

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date September 19, 2025
Publisher High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center
Maintainer
Identifier ivo://nasa.heasarc/m37cxo
Data Last Modified 2025-09-10
Category Astrophysics
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 026:00
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id 43467fe9-f13c-4f12-9052-44a78b77708a
Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
Homepage URL https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/W3Browse/all/m37cxo.html
Program Code 026:000
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 8824f6ef91edde0a90ac6952bed1dbe80e2cb7fd1eaa17d60d59338704ebece0
Source Schema Version 1.1

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