SAS watchout page
In this page some issues concerning
SAS and XMM-Newton data analysis are reported,
along with recommended workarounds and/or solutions, and useful tricks and tips.
Many of the items below are extracted from the
HelpDesk questions database,
and frequently updated.
Users are invited to search this database, especially the SAS related folders,
before contacting the
XMM-Newton HelpDesk. If you
encounter a new issue in analyzing XMM-Newton data with the SAS software, please
try to give as much information as needed to reproduce your problem, including
the following details:
- Output of the sasversion command,
- Observation identifier,
- Information about the CCF in use.
Current SAS Version related issues
SAS 12.0.0
- Cannot use epproc with runepnoise = yes? --
Answer
- Absolute timing analysis of data taken after 1 July 2012 needs a file update --
Answer
- The task xmmextractor does not run in SAS 12.0.0 built on Ubuntu 8.04 and openSUSE 11.2 --
Answer
- On Linux Ubuntu, some SAS tasks do not run due to a missing library, libXaw8.so.8 --
Answer
- Problems loading libraries running SAS tasks under MacOSX 10.7.4 (Lion) or
MacOSX 10.6.8 ("Snow Leopard") 64-bit? --
Answer
- Why are ESAS routines within SAS needing special calibration files? --
Answer
- Bug in the effective area generation for PN Burst mode data --
Answer
Evergreen tips and tricks
- Should I use evselect or epiclcorr for obtaining EPIC light curves? --
Answer
- These long parameter names are really annoying ... --
Answer
- How do I compare two Calibration Index Files? --
Answer
- Can I generate EPIC response matrices with all types of spectral binning? --
Answer
- Where can I find canned EPIC response matrices? --
Answer
- Can I perform the barycentric correction on OM data in Fast Mode? --
Answer
- How can I convert from OM count rates to fluxes? An update --
Answer
- Dealing with MOS1 data in Timing Mode: I heard that one column in MOS1 Timing Mode
is affected by "high offset", can I still analyze the data? --
Answer
ODF
- Why does it take so long to produce an ODF? --
Answer
PPS products
- Why do I get problems ingesting RGS (pipeline) spectra into XSPEC V12.x and
how can I solve this?
Answers
- How do I know which CCF were used to reduce my event list? --
Answer
- I do not find EPIC (or RGS or OM) processed data in my PPS distribution.
Did something go wrong with the pipeline processing? --
Answer
Previous SAS Version related issues
SAS 11.0.0
- Why am I getting a warning "EPN/BUCLOSEDODI (or EPN/TICLOSEDODI) is not a known
instrument/filetype combination"? --
Answer
- GTI filtering in emosaicproc: GTI parameters (pngtilists,
mos1gtilist and mos2gtilist) are not used for any filtering.
Is there any workaround for such a problem? --
Answer
- Why won't emosaic combine my image masks? --
Answer
- Why do I need to update ESAS CalDB? --
Answer
- When running the SAS 11.0.0 GUI (sas) for Mac OS X Leopard on PowerPC,
fonts appear illegible. How to fix the problem? --
Answer
- The html documentation available on both, on-line and the public distribution,
is missing the links to some well known tasks. For example the links to
epproc and emproc are missing in the list of all tasks.
However, the pdf documentation distributed publicly
includes the specific documents on these tasks.
Is there any fix for such a problem? --
Answer
Issues related to older SAS versions can be found on the
SAS watchout archive page.
