XMM-Newton Users Handbook

6.4 The XMM-Newton Science Archive (XSA)

The XMM-Newton Science Archive (XSA) became publicly available in April 2002. The XSA content is regularly updated with all the generated ODF, SDF and PPS products and with updated versions of the catalogues of EPIC sources, OM sources and Slew Survey sources, and ancillary info like associated proposal abstract, publications, etc.

In 2019 the XMM-Newton SOC performed the third bulk reprocessing of all XMM-Newton data obtained since the beginning of the mission in 1999, and all data are thus processed with SAS 18.0 or higher.

PIs of XMM-Newton observations can retrieve their own proprietary data using their password-protected XSA account.

Public data can be retrieved through the XSA user web interface: https://nxsa.esac.esa.int/nxsa-web/. Data can also be retrieved directly from the archive via URL or command line (see examples at the Command & URL access help page: https://nxsa.esac.esa.int/nxsa-web/#aio). XSA database tables can be queried using ADQL (Astronomical Data Query Language), see the Table Access Protocol (TAP) help page (https://nxsa.esac.esa.int/nxsa-web/#tap) for details.

Public and propietary XMM-Newton data can also be downloaded through the Python module astroquery.esa.xmm_newton (see https://nxsa.esac.esa.int/nxsa-web/#astroquery for details).

On-the-fly data analysis and processing can be performed from the XMM-Newton Science Archive interface using the Science Analysis System (SAS) without the need of downloading data or software. This is done internally via the Remote Interface for Science Analysis (RISA) server (see the RISA Technical Note, https://www.cosmos.esa.int/documents/332006/1361013/SW-TN-0035-1-0.pdf and the Interactive Data Analysis help page https://nxsa.esac.esa.int/nxsa-web/#risaHelp).

A Database of Upper Limits for a given position has been built based on XMM-Newton slew and pointed observations, and is updated regularly using all public observations in the XMM-Newton Science Archive (see section A.3.2). It is searchable from the XSA inteface since version XSA-13.1.

HILIGT (http://xmmuls.esac.esa.int/hiligt/) is a multimission upper limit server providing EPIC source parameters, if existing, or otherwise an upper limit value, from XMM-Newton pointed and slew observations, as well data from other high-energy missions (see the XMM-Newton Upper Limit Server Guide at https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/xmm-newton/uls-userguide and section A.3.2).

Of interest may also be the FLIX server providing flux limits from images taken with XMM-Newton; see section A.3.2.