ROSPSPC Catalog
The ROSPSPC database table contains a list of sources detected by the Standard
Analysis Software System (SASS) in public, unfiltered, pointed PSPC datasets.
In addition to the parameters returned by SASS (like position, count rate,
likelihood, etc.) each source in the table has associated with it a set of
source and sequence "flags." These flags are provided by the ROSAT data
centers in the US, Germany and the UK to help the user of the ROSPSPC
database table quickly judge the reliability of a given source.
The ROSPSPC table excludes sources that meet the following parameter criteria:
false_det = 'T' or deferred = 'T' or not_checked = 'T'. See the documentation
below for descriptions of these parameters.
The catalog consists of all primary source parameters from the automated
detection algorithm employed by the SASS. In addition each observation has
been quality checked, both by automatic algorithms and by detailed visual
inspection. The results of this quality checking are contained as a set of
logical-value flags for a set of principal source parameters. If a source
parameter is suspect, the associated flag is set to "TRUE"; parameters with
no obvious problems maintain the default, "FALSE", value.
ROSHRI Catalog
The ROSHRI data table contains a list of sources detected by the Standard
Analysis Software System (SASS) in reprocessed, public HRI datasets. In
addition to the parameters returned by SASS (like position, count rate,
signal-to-noise, etc.) each source in the table has associated with it a
set of source and sequence "flags." These flags are provided by the ROSAT
data centers in the US, Germany and the UK to help the user of the ROSHRI
database table quickly judge the reliability of a given source.
The ROSHRI table excludes sources that meet the following parameter criteria:
false_det = 'T' or deferred = 'T' or not_checked = 'T' or un_unique ='T'.
See the documentation below for descriptions of these parameters.
These data have been screened by ROSAT data centers in the US, Germany, and
the UK as a step in the production of the ROSAT Results Archive. The RRA
contains extracted source and associated products with an indication of
reliability for the primary parameters.
WGACAT Catalog
WGACAT is a point source catalog generated from all ROSAT PSPC pointed
observations. This catalog has been generated by N.E. White (HEASARC/GSFC),
P. Giommi (SDC/ASI) and L. Angelini (HEASARC/GSFC) and is a private research
effort, not related to the official catalogs generated by the ROSAT project.
The WGACAT was made first publicly available in November 1994 through the
HEASARC on-line service (White, Giommi and Angelini 1994), with a first
minor revision in March 1995 (WGACAT95 hereafter). It was generated using
all the public ROSAT PSPC pointed data available than, corresponding to
75 % of the entire set, and featured ~ 68000 detections of which 62000
were unique sources.
The current version, released in May 2000 (see also the update section),
is the final and complete version of WGACAT and includes the remaining
sequences not processed in the WGACAT95. WGACAT (May 2000) contains
about 88,000 detections, with more than 84,000 individual sources,
obtained from 4160 sequences.
The catalog was generated using an optimized sliding cell detect algorithm in
XIMAGE (first developed for the EXOSAT project). The inner and outer parts of
the images were run separately, to maximize the sensitivity to source
detection. This method is very sensitive in finding point sources, but can
also find spurious sources where there is extended emission. We have visually
inspected each detection, removed the obvious spurious cases and
assigned a quality flag to each detection.
