The EXTraS project: Exploring the X-ray Transient and variable Sky

The EXTraS project is extracting the hitherto unexplored temporal domain information buried in the serendipitous data collected by XMM-Newton/EPIC since its launch. This includes a search for fast transients, missed by standard image analysis, as well as a search and characterization of variability (both periodic and aperiodic) in hundreds of thousands of sources, spanning more than nine orders of magnitude in time scale and six orders of magnitude in flux. Phenomenological classification of variable sources will also be performed. All our results, together with new analysis tools, will be made available to the community in an easy-to-use form at the end of 2016, with prospects of extending the analysis to future data. EXTraS products will have a very broad range of applications, from the search for rare events to population studies, with a large impact in almost all fields of astrophysics. This will boost the scientific exploitation of XMM data and make EPIC the reference for time-domain astronomy in the soft X-rays. The EXTraS project (2014-2016), funded within the EU/FP7 framework, is carried out by a collaboration including INAF (Italy), IUSS (Italy), CNR/IMATI (Italy), University of Leicester (UK), MPE (Germany) and ECAP (Germany).