This task makes position information from the XMM ODF available as a FITS format product file. It has been determined that this product would have value both for constructing Good Time Intervals (using tabgtigen) based on orbit information, and for possibly creating barycentric correction tables. It is felt that a FITS format file conforming as much as possible to established Orbit file conventions would be more useful than the ascii Orbit file provided in the ODF.
This task will utilise the OAL_getPosition routine to return the x-y-z components of the position vector in km as well as the x-y-z components of the corresponding velocity vector in km/s, both with respect to the reference Kepler orbit. Both sets of values will be written into a standard OGIP-compliant FITS binary extension table with a TIME column value, derived from a start, stop and sampling interval time, each specified by the user. This task will default to sampling the entire input file with a timestep interval of 60.0 seconds.
XMM-Newton SOC/SSC -- 2005-08-15