A first look at the distant high energy X-ray population with NuSTAR
Abstract
The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), launched in June 2012, is opening the high energy X-ray sky for sensitive study for the first time. NuSTAR focusing X-ray optics are resolving the sources contributing to the peak of the X-ray background at >10 keV. To provide a sensitive census of this population, NuSTAR is performing an extragalactic survey, using a 3 tier approach: a very deep 200 ks, pencil-beam survey of the Extended Chandra Deep Field-South (ECDFS), a moderate depth 50 ks survey of the COSMOS field, and a shallow survey suing serendipitous sources detected in target local bright sources. In this talk, I will report on the first results from this survey, including now about 200 sources in the three fields combined. The NuSTAR sources are approximately 100 times fainter than those previously detected at >10 keV by Swift/BAT and have a very broad range in redshift and luminosity (z=0.02-3). The sources are characterized on the basis of their X-ray properties (hardness ratio and luminosity), optical spectroscopy and optical to mid -infrared spectral energy distributions.
- Publication:
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American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #223
- Pub Date:
- January 2014
- Bibcode:
- 2014AAS...22341605C