Flux estimations of faint X-ray sources

These sources are often too faint for parametric spectral modeling using well-established methods such as fitting with XSPEC. We discuss the estimation of apparent and intrinsic broadband X-ray fluxes and soft X-ray absorption from gas along the line of sight to these sources, using nonparametric methods.

Apparent flux is estimated from the ratio of the source count rate to the instrumental effective area averaged over the chosen band. Absorption, intrinsic flux, and errors on these quantities are estimated from comparison of source photometric quantities with those of high signal-to-noise spectra that were simulated using spectral models characteristic of the class of astrophysical sources under study. The concept of this method is similar to the long-standing use of color-magnitude diagrams in optical and infrared astronomy, with X-ray median energy replacing color index and X-ray source counts replacing magnitude.