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Cepheus A SFR XMM-Newton X-Ray Point Source Catalog

Published by High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center | National Aeronautics and Space Administration | Metadata Last Checked: February 14, 2026 | Last Modified: 2026-02-10
Cepheus A is a star formation region (SFR) at a distance of ~ 730 pc consisting of two main H II regions, Cep A East and Cep A West. Cep A was observed with the EPIC cameras of the XMM-Newton observatory on 2003 August 23 for 43.9ks. In this observation, X-rays from both components of Cep A, East and West, were discovered by XMM-Newton, as well as from the Herbig-Haro object HH 168, which joins the ranks of other energetic H-H objects that are sources of temperature T >= 10<sup>6</sup> K X-ray emission. A total of 102 distinct X-ray sources were detected in this 44 ks observation, many presumed to be pre-main-sequence stars on the basis of the reddening of their optical and IR counterparts, the latter being found by matching the positions of the 102 X-ray sources with objects in the USNO-B1.0 (Monet et al. 2003, AJ, 125, 984) and Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) catalogs using a 2.5" matching radius. The authors performed source detection on all the XMM-Newton data in two energy bands: 0.2 - 1 keV ("soft") and 1 - 10 keV ("hard"). They detected 24 soft sources and 85 hard sources. Seven of the sources appear in both bands, where the criterion for a match between the bands is a positional offset of < 2.5 arcseconds. Thus, the total number of distinct X-ray sources detected (and listed in this table) is 102. This table was created by the HEASARC in July 2007 based on the <a href="https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/ftp/cats/J/ApJ/626/272">CDS Catalog J/ApJ/626/272</a> file table2.dat. This is a service provided by NASA HEASARC .

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