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NGC 4472 Chandra X-Ray Point Source Catalog

Metadata Updated: October 23, 2025

The Chandra X-Ray Point Source Catalog of the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 4472 contains the results of a Chandra ACIS-S/Hubble Space Telescope (HST) study of the point sources of this Virgo Cluster galaxy. The authors ran WAVDETECT from the CIAO 2.2 software package using wavelet scales from 1 to 16 pixels spaced by factors of 2, setting a false-source probability detection threshold of 10<sup>-6</sup>, which should yield an expectation value of slightly less than one false source over the entire ACIS-S chip. They identify 144 X-ray point sources outside the nuclear region, 72 of which are located within the HST fields. An additional 3 sources are within 8" of the center of the galaxy and appear to be associated either with a weak active galactic nucleus or with brightness enhancements in the hot interstellar gas. One additional source (not included in this table) appears to be a spurious detection, as WAVDETECT assigns it a count rate of 1.5 counts, and visual inspection fails to find evidence of a source at that location. The optical data show 1102 sources whose half-light radii are small enough to be globular cluster candidates, 829 of which also have colors consistent with being globular clusters (with only four in the restricted central 10" region). 30 X-ray sources within 0.7" of an optical source with optical colors consistent with being globular clusters were found. Two additional sources show optical colors outside the globular cluster color range and are likely to be either foreground or background objects. The thirty globular cluster matches are likely to be low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs) associated with the globular clusters, while ~ 42 of the X-ray sources have no optical counterparts to V <~ 25 and I <~ 24, indicating that they are likely to be predominantly LMXBs in the field star population with a small amount of possible contamination from background active galactic nuclei. Thus approximately 40% of the X-ray sources are in globular clusters and ~ 4% of the globular clusters contain X-ray sources. This HEASARC table contains the X-ray data for the above-mentioned 147 detected X-ray sources, and the correlative optical data for the 30 optical counterparts which have colors consistent with being globular clusters. It does not contain the data from the full list of optical sources which were given in Table 2 of the reference paper. This table was created by the HEASARC in May 2007 based on CDS table J/ApJ/586/814 files table1.dat and table3.dat. 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 October 23, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from NASA Data.json

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date October 23, 2025
Publisher High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center
Maintainer
Identifier ivo://nasa.heasarc/ngc4472cxo
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 cde46bb2-e1bb-4521-93fe-fa1152a8607b
Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
Homepage URL https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/W3Browse/all/ngc4472cxo.html
Program Code 026:000
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 3a59f10e7834c7a5bb6dad242d7574a61180093c66ed4bad35ee3673f18aa725
Source Schema Version 1.1

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