XMM-Newton Science Analysis System


startsas (startsas-0.7) [xmmsas_20230412_1735-21.0.0]

Description

After Heasoft and SAS initialisations, the quickest way to start a working session with SAS is to run

startsas odfid=0122700101

where the value given to the odfid parameter is the ODF ID of an existing XMM-Newton Observation you want to work with.

The startsas program will understand you want to get such Observation from the XMM-Newton Science Archive. The file download will be done by means of a special version of the Python module astroquery prepared to work with XMM-Newton data.

By default data are obtained at level ODF which provides only the raw observation data. The parameter named level can be used to select an alternate level PPS, which will download the raw data and the output products resulting from processing such data with the XMM-Newton Pipeline.

For level ODF, the file $<$odfid$>$.tar.gz is downloaded to a directory of your choice. You may set such directory by means of the parameter workdir. If such directory does not exist, it is created new. If you do not set a specific working directory, it is assumed your working directory is where you started with startsas. Once the tar file $<$odfid$>$.tar.gz file s downloaded, it is unpacked into a subdirectory named $<$odfid$>$, within your working directory.

For level PPS, all Pipeline products are placed in $<$odfid$>$/pps. A link to the html including the Observation Summary (P$<$odfid$>$OBX000SUMMAR0000.HTM) is printed out.

Instead of odfid, we can use the parameters sas_ccf and sas_odf to take already existing ccf.cif and SAS summary files, as

startsas sas_ccf=$<$path$>$/ccf.cif sas_odf=$<$path$>$/*SUM.SAS

The program understands you want to use these ccf.cif and SAS summary file, in directory $<$path$>$, to define SAS_CCF and SAS_ODF for subsequent SAS commands.

Before using effectively these files the program will check them to see whether

• The PATH keyword is written inside the SAS summary file
• The mandatory file MANIFEST.NNNNNN (where NNNNNN is the AMS extraction number) is present to ensure they belong to a real ODF.