Motivating the Search

All sky surveys are common in astronomy and are a primary method of finding new objects in the universe. We chose to perform our survey using archived data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory (CXO). X-ray surveys in particular are well suited for observing high-energy objects like active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and variable stars, though surveys focused on these objects can miss other, potentially more interesting sources. Our blind search, without a specific target in mind, opens us to finding all types of variable x-ray sources. To increase our odds of finding interesting sources, we restricted our search to galaxy clusters. Each cluster can contain between 1000 and 10000 galaxies, all within a single observation, maximizing the number of potential sources given limited observations.