The XMM-Newton serendipitous survey. V. The Second XMM-Newton serendipitous source catalogue

Aims: Pointed observations with XMM-Newton provide the basis for creating catalogues of X-ray sources detected serendipitously in each field. This paper describes the creation and characteristics of the 2XMM catalogue. <BR />Methods: The 2XMM catalogue has been compiled from a new processing of the XMM-Newton EPIC camera data. The main features of the processing pipeline are described in detail. <BR />Results: The catalogue, the largest ever made at X-ray wavelengths, contains 246 897 detections drawn from 3491 public XMM-Newton observations over a 7-year interval, which relate to 191 870 unique sources. The catalogue fields cover a sky area of more than 500 deg^2. The non-overlapping sky area is ~360 deg<SUP>2</SUP> (~1% of the sky) as many regions of the sky are observed more than once by XMM-Newton. The catalogue probes a large sky area at the flux limit where the bulk of the objects that contribute to the X-ray background lie and provides a major resource for generating large, well-defined X-ray selected source samples, studying the X-ray source population and identifying rare object types. The main characteristics of the catalogue are presented, including its photometric and astrometric properties Based on observations obtained with XMM-Newton, an ESA science mission with instruments and contributions directly funded by ESA Member States and NASA. The catalogue and full Tables D.1 and D.2 are available in electronic form at the CDS via anonymous ftp to cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr (130.79.128.5) or via http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/cgi-bin/qcat?J/A+A/493/339