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NuSTAR Serendipitous Survey 40-Month Primary Source Catalog

Metadata Updated: September 19, 2025

This table contains the first full catalog and science results for the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) Serendipitous Survey. The catalog incorporates data taken during the first 40 months of NuSTAR operation, which provide ~20 Ms of effective exposure time over 331 fields, with an areal coverage of 13 deg<sup>2</sup>, and 498 sources (the abstract of the reference paper states that there are 497 sources) detected in total over the 3-24 keV energy range. There are 276 sources with spectroscopic redshifts and classifications, largely resulting from the authors' extensive campaign of ground-based spectroscopic follow-up. The authors characterize the overall sample in terms of the X-ray, optical, and infrared source properties. The sample is primarily composed of active galactic nuclei (AGN), detected over a large range in redshift from z = 0.002 to 3.4 (median redshift z of 0.56), but also includes 16 spectroscopically confirmed Galactic sources. There is a large range in X-ray flux, from log (f<sub>3-24keV</sub>) ~ -14 to -11 (in units of erg s<sup>-1</sup> cm<sup>-2</sup>), and in rest-frame 10-40 keV luminosity, from log (L_10-40keV) ~ 39 to 46 (in units of erg s<sup>-1</sup>), with a median of 44.1. Approximately 79% of the NuSTAR sources have lower-energy (<10 keV) X-ray counterparts from XMM-Newton, Chandra, and Swift XRT observations. The mid-infrared (MIR) analysis, using WISE all-sky survey data, shows that MIR AGN color selections miss a large fraction of the NuSTAR-selected AGN population, from ~15% at the highest luminosities (L<sub>X</sub> > 10<sup>44</sup> erg s<sup>-1</sup>) to ~80% at the lowest luminosities (L<sub>X</sub> < 10<sup>43</sup> erg s<sup>-1</sup>). The authors' optical spectroscopic analysis finds that the observed fraction of optically obscured AGN (i.e., the type 2 fraction) is F_Type 2_ = 53 (+14, -15) per cent, for a well-defined subset of the 8-24 keV selected sample. This is higher, albeit at a low significance level, than the type 2 fraction measured for redshift- and luminosity-matched AGNs selected by <10 keV X-ray missions. This table contains the Primary NuSTAR Serendipitous Source Catalog of 498 sources found using the source detection procedure described in Section 2.3 of the reference paper, and listed in Table 5 (op. cit.). Additional information on these Primary Catalog sources that the authors obtained using optical spectroscopy is available in Table 6 of the reference paper (q.v.). This table does not contain the 64 sources in the Secondary NuSTAR Serendipitous Source Catalog that were found using wavdetect and that are listed in Table 7 of the reference paper: this is available in the HEASARC database as a separate table, dubbed <a href="/W3Browse/nustar/nustarssc2.html">NUSTARSSC2</a>. This table was created by the HEASARC in July 2017 based on the machine-readable version of Table 5 from the reference paper, the Primary NuSTAR Serendipitous Source Catalog, that was obtsined from the ApJ web site. 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.

Downloads & Resources

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/nustarssc
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 89a0dc82-5db2-4a78-97ad-6886b22a0613
Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
Homepage URL https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/W3Browse/all/nustarssc.html
Program Code 026:000
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash cf42119de4a1ea50954b4c5ffdf34f1cc451f31b082153ebe6cfe241c2b23215
Source Schema Version 1.1

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