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Is the outcome of SciSim (V4.0) really a realistic representation of science data obtained with XMM-Newon?

Actually NOT.

Due to evolution of the system characteristics and calibration through the mission, SciSim V3.0 was presenting serious deficiencies and had to be refurbished. Especially necessary for an assessment of the calibration reliability of simulations of the different observing modes (still to be performed by the XMM-Newton calibration teams) was the closure of the loop between simulation and data analysis. This has been done complementing the SciSim release with the release of 90 specific SciSim calibration files included in the SciSim CCF tarfile , together with the corresponding Calibration Index file CCF_scisim.cif.

A status summary of SciSim can be read under http://xmm.esac.esa.int/external/xmm_data_analysis/scisim/SciSim4_relnotes.shtml.

We expect that within the next months a "re-calibration" of SciSim is performed, with special care in those aspects which are not good represented in the simulator (eg. the algorithm covering CCD CTI effects). Such an exercise should be able to give (at least orientative) quantitative accuracies in the different fields.