A deep XMM-Newton serendipitous survey of a middle-latitude area - II. New deeper X-ray and optical observations

Context. The radio-quiet neutron star 1E1207.4−5209 has been the target of several XMM-Newton observations, with a total exposure of ∼350 ks. The source is located at intermediate galactic latitude (b ∼ 10 ◦ ), i.e. in a sky region with an extremely interesting mix of both galactic and extra-galactic X-ray sources. Aims. The aim of our work is to investigate the properties of both the intermediate-latitude galactic and extra-galactic X-ray source populations in the 1E1207.4−5209 field. Methods. We performed a coherent analysis of the whole XMM-Newton observation data set to build a catalogue of serendipitous X-ray sources detected with high confidence and to derive information on the source flux, spectra, and time variability. In addition, we performed a complete multi-band (UBVRI) optical coverage of the field with the Wide Field Imager (WFI )o f the ESO/MPG 2.2 m telescope (La Silla) to search for candidate optical counterparts to the X-ray sources, down to a V-band limiting magnitude of ∼24.5. Results. From the combined observation data set we detected a total of 144 serendipitous X-ray sources. We find evidence that the source log N− log S distribution may be different from those computed either in the Galactic plane or at high galactic latitudes. Thanks to the refined X-ray positions and to the WFI observations, we found candidate optical counterparts for most of the X-ray sources in our compilation. For most of the brightest ones we proposed a likely classification based on both the X-ray spectra and the optical colours. Conclusions. Our results indicate that at intermediate galactic latitude the X-ray source population is dominated by the extra-galactic component, but with a significant contribution from the galactic component in the soft energy band, below 2 keV.