XMM-Newton Phase II RPS Users Manual

5.2.4.1 Filling in EPIC MOS details

Fig. 13 displays a screen shot of an EPIC MOS exposure form sheet. The following (mandatory) entries must be made there.

Figure 13: Screen shot of an EPIC MOS exposure form sheet for a ”Full Frame” imaging exposure with a duration of 123034 s and an offset with respect to the previous exposure of 0 s. The ”THIN FILTER” optical blocking filter was chosen.

”Filter Wheel”, EPIC optical blocking filters

The allowed choice of filters is presented in Table 1.

Table 1: EPIC filters

Filter$^1$	Description
CLOSED	Blocked filter position
THIN FILTER	Thin aluminium
MEDIUM FILTER	Medium aluminium
THICK FILTER	Thick aluminium Polypropylene

Note to Table 1:
1) During the current AO only the highlighted filters are recommended for use.

”Exposure Time (secs)”

The valid range is between 0 and 117 000 s.

”Exposure Offset (secs)”

The exposure offset should be left at its default value of 0 s to ensure continuous operation of the instrument. Only under special circumstances, under which one would not want the instrument to operate for a certain amount of time, should an offset with respect to the previous instrument exposure, if any, be defined here. The valid range is between 0 and 1 000 s.

”Instrument”, MOS camera unit

When first entering this page, the ”Instrument” query will have the two options ”EPIC MOS-1” and ”EPIC MOS-2” from which users must choose one. EPIC MOS exposures are defined independently for both instruments. Once specified, and once all entries have been made and successfully committed to memory, this is not a selectable parameter anymore, but the fixed entry will appear on the form sheet, as displayed in Fig. 13. Therefore, it is not possible to change a MOS-1 exposure to a MOS-2 exposure without copying it.

”Instrument Mode”, MOS modes of operation

For a description of allowed EPIC modes see Table 2 below and consult the XMM-Newton Users Handbook for details.

Table 2: EPIC MOS mode names

EPIC MOS mode name

Full Frame

Large Window

Small Window

Timing

”Order (ins. based)”

In this field one can define the sequence of exposures using the same instrument within an observation. If you do not specify this parameter explicitly, the exposures will be performed just in the order they were entered into XRPS.