All of the deliverables have been made and all of the milestones achieved. We have successfully developed tools that allow us to cross-match many astronomical catalogues of sources and derive Spectral Energy Distributions (SEDs) that are distributed through several existing platforms as well as developing a new dedicated server to disseminate the results,
https://xcatdb.unistra.fr/sedfinder/(s’ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre) . Using this data we were able to produce statistical identifications of sources and these results have been used to validate the work carried out. We have developed a new platform to determine the sensitivity limit or flux upper limit in case of no detection on any part of the sky observed with the X-ray cameras on XMM-Newton,
http://flix.irap.omp.eu/(s’ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre) . Further this platform can take the stacked data in any particular region of the XMM-Newton observed sky and calculate an upper limit on the combined data. The algorithms and platform, along with some description about the XMM2ATHENA project have been described in a refereed publication. We have further developed the stacking algorithms to ensure that we reach the deepest fluxes possible when combining multiple exposures, see Figure 1 and we have developed new variability tasks that test all XMM-Newton X-ray sources for long-term variability over up to 35 years and look for short variability in sources that have not even been previously detected due to their faint nature. We have also generated a new module in the XMM-Newton automated pipeline to look for long-term variable sources in almost real time and provided a platform to retrieve the alerts to these variable sources,
http://flix.irap.omp.eu/stonks(s’ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre) for follow-up with other telescopes or to use in synergy with transients detected with other astronomical facilities. We have generated rudimentary spectra when none exist for a specific source and provide fits for these sources as well automatically generated spectra and use the various XMM2ATHENA products to carry out scientifically motivated fits. We provide all of the catalogues of these fits on the XMM2ATHENA webpage
http://xmm-ssc.irap.omp.eu/xmm2athena/(s’ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre) available in English, French, Spanish and German. We provide classifications of the sources detected with the Optical Monitor telescope on board XMM-Newton and provide information about the variability of these sources. These catalogues are published on the XMM2ATHENA webpages, along with the classifications of the X-ray sources and the photometric redshifts that we have generated as a part of this project. To ensure excellent visibility of the tools and to validate the results, we have published studies made using the deliverables, with a total of 36 publications, all of which have open access. Much of the software has been built so that it can also be used for the next generation X-ray telescope, NewAthena. Finally, all of these tools and products were advertised during a 3 day workshop attended by more than 90 people in February 2024 :
https://xmm2athena.sciencesconf.org/(s’ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre) During the project we have also released new incremental versions of the existing XMM-Newton X-ray catalogues, 4XMM-DR11(s), 4XMM-DR12(s), 4XMM-DR13(s) and 4XMM-DR14(s), as well as generating a catalogue constructed from all of the X-ray detections made during the slewing of the telescope, called XMMSL3. We have also hosted students for internships and had open days, as well as many other activities that can be seen on the XMM2ATHENA webpages and communicated through Facebook and X, to raise the profile of the project, the ESA observatories and X-ray data in general. Our project has enabled the number of papers being published with the XMM-Newton catalogues to increase three-fold and the total number of publications written worldwide per year to increase by 33%, compared to before the beginning of the project, see Figure 2.
