XMM-Newton-NEWS #109, 01-Jul-2010
XMM-Newton Science Operations Centre at
ESA's European Space Astronomy Centre,
P.O. Box - Apdo. 78, 28691 Villanueva de la Cañada, Madrid, Spain
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Contents:
- XMM-Newton Workshop "Ultra-Luminous X-ray sources and Middle Weight
Black Holes": presentations available on-line
- Release of a new version of the EPIC Calibration Status Document
- New fitted Time Correlation Files (TCX) for XMM-Newton observations
- XMM-Newton Users Group: minutes of meeting and presentations
available
- Patch to SAS version 10.0
- Call for XMM-Newton results with potential for ESA press releases
XMM-Newton Workshop "Ultra-Luminous X-ray sources and Middle Weight
Black Holes":
presentations available on-line
The XMM-Newton Workshop "Ultra-Luminous X-ray sources and Middle
Weight Black Holes" (see
issue #95
of this Newsletter) took place at
the European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC) near Madrid from the 24th
to the 26th of May 2010. About seventy astronomers from Europe, USA
and Japan attended the workshop.
Presentations of the workshop and the group pictures are available
on-line at:
http://xmm.esac.esa.int/external/xmm_science/workshops/2010_science/
Refereed workshop proceedings will be published as a regular issue of
"Astronomische Nachrichten (Astronomical Notes)" in 2011.
Release of a new version of the EPIC Calibration Status Document
A new version of the EPIC status of calibration and data analysis
document (Issue 2.10) is now available at:
http://xmm2.esac.esa.int/external/xmm_sw_cal/calib/
This document reflects the current calibration status and is aligned
with SASv10.0 (see
issue #107 of this Newsletter). A significant
refinement of the pn redistribution is embodied in the new
EPN_REDIST_0011.CCF, released in mid-June. Better agreement between
the observed and predicted
PATTERN distributions as calculated by
"epatplot" for EPIC-pn Timing Mode exposures is ensured by the
EPN_QUANTUMEFF_0017.CCF, which includes for the first time the
RAWY-dependency of the
PATTERN fraction in this mode.
New fitted Time Correlation Files (TCX) for XMM-Newton observations
Improved Time Correlation Files (TCX) are being generated for ODFs in
the XMM-Newton Science Archive (see also
issue #89 of this
Newsletter). They reduce the scatter of absolute timing measurements
in individual observations from 100 to less than 70 micro-seconds
(1-sigma). Users are referred to Sect. 1.6 of the new version of the
EPIC Calibration Status Document (see previous item of this
Newsletter) for further details.
More information on how to retrieve the new TCX or updated ODF files
is available at:
http://xmm.esac.esa.int/external/xmm_products/tcx_recovery/
XMM-Newton Users Group: minutes of meeting and presentations available
The XMM-Newton Users Group met on the 12th and 13th of May 2010 at
ESAC. The minutes were approved on the 23rd of June and are available,
together with the presentations of the meeting, at:
http://xmm.esac.esa.int/external/xmm_user_support/usersgroup
Patch to SAS version 10.0
A second small patch to the recently released SAS 10.0.0 version (see issues
#106 and
#108 of this Newsletter) has been released on the 28th
of June, 2010. The patch includes a fix of the task
"evselect",
related to a problem in the derivation of light curves with time
binning close to the CCD frame times, and an extra initialization of
FITSIO within "esas", to avoid problems under MacOS operating
systems. We took the opportunity to release an upgraded version of
epiclccorr with improved exposure correction, and modified the signal
to noise calculation by the task
"specgroup".
For more information and to download this patch, please go to:
http://xmm.esac.esa.int/sas/current/sas_news.shtml
Call for XMM-Newton results with potential for ESA press releases
We are looking forward to hearing from you about exciting new results
obtained with XMM-Newton observations. Such results represent an
important support for the mission.
The XMM-Newton team does not have dedicated resources to
systematically monitor astro-ph and the published literature for
interesting new material. However, ESA does have a Media Relations
Service team, who will help arranging appropriate publicity and press
releases. Please remember that they can only start the work once they
know that a result is available and that they need some time to
accommodate the story, since press releases are organised for several
projects.
Contact us through the helpdesk at:
http://xmm.esac.esa.int/external/xmm_user_support/helpdesk.shtml
Yours sincerely,
XMM-Newton SOC
