juliensimon/xray-binary-catalog

X-ray Binary Catalog

Credit: NASA/ESA/Hubble

Part of a dataset collection on Hugging Face.

Dataset description

Merged catalog of high-mass and low-mass X-ray binaries from HEASARC (Liu et al. 2006/2007).

X-ray binaries are stellar systems in which a compact object (neutron star or black hole) accretes matter from a companion star, producing intense X-ray emission. They are divided into two classes based on the mass of the donor star:

High-Mass X-ray Binaries (HMXBs): The donor is a massive O or B star (typically >10 solar masses). Accretion occurs via stellar wind or Roche lobe overflow. HMXBs are found in star-forming regions and include Be/X-ray binaries (the largest subclass) and supergiant X-ray binaries.

Low-Mass X-ray Binaries (LMXBs): The donor is a low-mass star (typically <1 solar mass). Accretion proceeds through Roche lobe overflow, forming a bright accretion disk. LMXBs are concentrated toward the Galactic center and globular clusters. They include the Z and Atoll sources and the soft X-ray transients.

X-ray binaries are natural laboratories for studying accretion physics, strong gravity, and the equation of state of ultra-dense matter. Their X-ray variability (pulsations, quasi-periodic oscillations, thermonuclear bursts) encodes information about the compact object's mass, spin, and magnetic field.

This dataset is suitable for tabular classification tasks.

Schema

Column	Type	Description	Sample	Null %
name	str	Primary catalog designation (e.g., '4U 1700-37', 'Cygnus X-1') or IAU X-ray survey name; from HMXB/LMXB catalog column 'Name'	1A 0535+262	0.0%
ra	float64	Right ascension, ICRS J2000.0 (degrees, 0-360)	84.7275	0.0%
dec	float64	Declination, ICRS J2000.0 (degrees, -90 to +90)	26.31583333	0.0%
lii	float64	Galactic longitude (degrees, 0-360)	181.4450493	0.0%
bii	float64	Galactic latitude (degrees, -90 to +90); LMXBs concentrate toward the Galactic center (|b| < 10 deg)	-2.64342463	0.0%
vmag	float64	Visual (V-band) magnitude of the optical counterpart; null if unmeasured or heavily obscured	8.9	57.5%
class	int64	Sub-class of the binary (e.g., 'Be/X' for Be X-ray binary, 'SFXT' for supergiant fast X-ray transient, 'Atoll' or 'Z' for LMXB X-ray color-color diagram type)	1310	0.0%
binary_type	str	Binary class: 'HMXB' (high-mass donor, typically O/B star >10 Msun) or 'LMXB' (low-mass donor, Roche-lobe overflow, <1 Msun); derived from the source catalog	HMXB	0.0%
flux	float64	Typical X-ray flux in mCrab; 1 Crab ~ 2.4e-8 erg/cm^2/s in 2-10 keV; null if not measured	50000.0	39.9%

Quick stats

• 301 X-ray binaries total
• 114 High-Mass X-ray Binaries (HMXB)
• 187 Low-Mass X-ray Binaries (LMXB)

Usage

from datasets import load_dataset

ds = load_dataset("juliensimon/xray-binary-catalog", split="train")
df = ds.to_pandas()

from datasets import load_dataset

ds = load_dataset("juliensimon/xray-binary-catalog", split="train")
df = ds.to_pandas()

# Count by type
print(df["binary_type"].value_counts())

# HMXBs vs LMXBs
hmxb = df[df["binary_type"] == "HMXB"]
lmxb = df[df["binary_type"] == "LMXB"]
print(f"{len(hmxb):,} HMXBs, {len(lmxb):,} LMXBs")

# Sky distribution
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(12, 6))
for btype, group in df.groupby("binary_type"):
    ax.scatter(group["ra"], group["dec"], s=5, alpha=0.7, label=btype)
ax.set_xlabel("RA (deg)")
ax.set_ylabel("Dec (deg)")
ax.legend()
ax.set_title("X-ray Binary Sky Distribution")
plt.show()

Data source

https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/W3Browse/all/hmxbcat.html

Related datasets

• juliensimon/pulsar-catalog

• juliensimon/mcgill-magnetar-catalog

• juliensimon/chandra-x-ray-sources

• juliensimon/gravitational-wave-events

If you find this dataset useful, please consider giving it a like on Hugging Face. It helps others discover it.

About the author

Created by Julien Simon — AI Operating Partner at Fortino Capital. Part of the Space Datasets collection.

Citation

@dataset{xray_binary_catalog,
  title = {X-ray Binary Catalog},
  author = {juliensimon},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/xray-binary-catalog},
  publisher = {Hugging Face}
}

License

CC-BY-4.0