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Fornax Dwarf Galaxy XMM-Newton X-Ray Point Source Catalog

Metadata Updated: April 10, 2026

This table contains some of the results of a deep archive XMM-Newton observation of the Fornax spheroidal galaxy that the authors analyzed with the aim of fully characterizing the X-ray source population (in most of the cases likely to be background active galactic nuclei) detected towards the target. A cross-correlation with the available databases allowed them to find a source that may be associated with a variable star belonging to the galaxy. The authors also searched for X-ray sources in the vicinity of the Fornax globular clusters GC 3 and GC 4 and found two sources probably associated with the respective clusters. The deep X-ray observation was also suitable for the search for the intermediate-mass black hole (of mass ~ 10<sup>4</sup> solar masses) expected to be hosted in the center of the galaxy. In the case of Fornax, this search is extremely difficult since the galaxy centroid of gravity is poorly constrained because of the large asymmetry observed in the optical surface brightness. Since the authors cannot firmly establish the existence of an X-ray counterpart of the putative black hole, they put constraints only on the accretion parameters. In particular, they found that the corresponding upper limit on the accretion efficiency, with respect to the Eddington luminosity, is as low as a few 10<sup>-5</sup>. This table was created by the HEASARC in February 2013 based on an electronic version of Table 1 from the reference paper which was obtained from the A&A web site. This is a service provided by NASA HEASARC .

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: See this page for license information.

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date April 10, 2026

Metadata Source

Harvested from NASA Data.json

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date April 10, 2026
Publisher High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center
Maintainer
Identifier ivo://nasa.heasarc/fornaxxmm
Data Last Modified 2026-04-06
Category Astrophysics
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 026:00
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id 79939683-ea64-480b-aef4-296bd62dd1a3
Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
Homepage URL ivo://nasa.heasarc/fornaxxmm
License https://www.usa.gov/government-works
Program Code 026:000
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 9535330ca3784863074c9eb2759c2dc706dededfdb02e3bc95af9a248cc47b37
Source Schema Version 1.1

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