Chandra Orion Ultradeep Project: Observations and Source Lists

We present a description of the data reduction methods and the derived catalog of more than 1600 X-ray point sources from the exceptionally deep 2003 January Chandra X-Ray Observatory (Chandra) observation of the Orion Nebula Cluster and embedded populations around OMC-1. The observation was obtained with Chandra's Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS) and has been nicknamed the Chandra Orion Ultradeep Project (COUP). With an 838 ks exposure made over a continuous period of 13.2 days, the COUP observation provides the most uniform and comprehensive data set on the X-ray emission of normal stars ever obtained in the history of X-ray astronomy.