Optical Imaging of Serendipitous Chandra Field Sources in the Galactic Plane

Zhao, P.; Grindlay, J. E.; Edmonds, P.; Garcia, M. R.; McClintock, J. E.; Murray, S. S.; Cool, A.
Bibliographical reference

American Astronomical Society, 196th AAS Meeting, #37.02; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 32, p.733

Advertised on:
5
2000
Number of authors
7
IAC number of authors
0
Citations
0
Refereed citations
0
Description
Chandra X-ray Observatory has unprecedented spatial resolution and sensitivity. Its 0.5 arcsec on-axis PSF provides for the first time an angular resolution comparable to ground based optical telescopes. Thus the serendipitous sources in each Chandra field constitute a rich collection of previously unknown X-ray sources with precise positions. The Chandra Multiwavelength Plane (ChaMPlane) Survey is a project to identify a large sample of these serendipitous X-ray sources in the galactic plane, including cataclysmic variables, quiescent low mass x-ray binaries, Be X-ray binaries and stellar coronal sources (see our paper ``ChaMPlane: Measuring the Faint X-ray Binary and Stellar X-ray Content of the Galaxy'' in this meeting). A pilot survey of this project has been successfully conducted in clear weather at the CTIO 4m in March, 2000 with the newly installed MOSAIC-II CCD detector. Nine Chandra cycle-1 fields were observed. Photometry down to 24th R magnitude in the galactic plane was performed in the V, R, I and Hα bands. X-ray sources are identified by their Hα excess in the R vs. (Hα - R) diagram. We will show the preliminary results comparing with the available Chandra X-ray images, including the field of the X-ray nova A0620-00 which has already been observed with Chandra.