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Cygnus OB2 Association 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 21, 2026 | Last Modified: 2026-02-17
Cyg OB2 is one of the most massive associations of O-type stars in our Galaxy. Despite the large interstellar reddening towards Cyg OB2, many studies, spanning a wide range of wavelengths, have been conducted to more clearly understand this association. X-ray observations provide a powerful tool to overcome the effect of interstellar absorption and study the most energetic processes associated with the stars in Cyg OB2. The author analyses XMM-Newton data to investigate the X-ray and UV properties of massive O-type stars as well as low-mass pre-main sequence stars in Cyg OB2. Six XMM-Newton observations of the core of Cyg OB2 were obtained. In the analysis, the author paid particular attention to the variability of the X-ray bright OB stars, especially the luminous blue variable candidate Cyg OB2 #12. He found that X-ray variability is quite common among the stars in Cyg OB2. While short-term variations are restricted mostly to low-mass pre-main sequence stars, one third of the OB stars display long-term variations. The X-ray flux of CygO B2 #12 varies by 37%, over timescales from days to years, while its mean log L<sub>X</sub>/L<sub>bol</sub> amounts to -6.10. These properties suggest that Cyg OB2 wind. Two other X-ray bright O-type stars (MT91 516 and CPR2002A11) display variations that suggest they are interacting wind binary systems. This table lists the general properties of the X-ray sources detected in Cyg OB2 with the EPIC cameras onboard XMM-Newton as given in Table 2 of the reference paper. An additional list of the properties of the sources detected inside Cyg OB2 with the two UV filters of the OM instrument onboard XMM-Newton which was contained in Table 4 of the reference paper is not included herein. This table was created by the HEASARC in December 2011 based on <a href="https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/ftp/cats/J/A+A/536/A31">CDS Catalog J/A+A/536/A31</a> file table2.dat. This is a service provided by NASA HEASARC .

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