The 1st year of the Swift SMC Survey (S-CUBED)

The survey consists of 142 tiled pointings covering the optical extent of the SMC, which is performed weekly by NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, with an exposure per tile of 60s. The survey is focused on discovery and monitoring of X-ray outbursts from the large known and unknown population of Be/X-ray binaries (BeXRBs) in the SMC.

Given the very low background of Swift's X-ray telescope, even with a short exposure per tile, S-CUBED is typically sensitive to outbursts in the SMC at >1%-2% Eddington luminosity for a typical 1.4M_{sun}_ neutron star compact object. This sensitivity, combined with the high cadence and the fact that the survey can be performed all year round, makes it a powerful discovery tool for outbursting accreting X-ray pulsars in the SMC.