XMM-Newton-NEWS


XMM-NEWTON NEWS #18,    12-Nov-2001

ESA, XMM-Newton Science Operations Centre at
European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC)
P.O. Box - Apdo. 50727, 28080 Madrid, Spain

SOC Home Page: http://xmm.esac.esa.int/
Helpdesk web interface: https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/xmm-newton/xmm-newton-helpdesk
Helpdesk email address: xmmhelp@sciops.esa.int
News Mailing List: https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/xmm-newton/newsletterindex.shtml

Contents:

Dear Colleagues,

Conference programme timeline available !!

The (final) timeline for the full program of the "New Visions of the X-Ray Universe in the XMM-Newton and Chandra era" symposium is available on-line at:
http://www.estec.esa.nl/conferences/01C12/fp.pdf

Please check the program and let the conference organisers ( mgw@star.le.ac.uk and confburo@esa.int ) know if there are any errors left. The program has to go to the printer on Wednesday Nov. 14 and we will try to accommodate any (preferably minor) changes in the program up to that time.

The currently available version of the program has allocated an identification number to all poster papers. This ID number will also be used for identification during the poster display sessions.

AO-2: statistics about submitted proposals

The XMM-Newton Second Announcement of Opportunity (AO-2) was closed on 26-Oct-2001. In total 870 proposals were successfully submitted via the XMM-Newton Remote Proposal System requesting 112583 ksec of science time. This figure corresponds to an over subscription factor of about 9.5, which is significantly higher than the value of 8 that was reached for AO-1.

SOC received proposals from 607 different Principal Investigators (PIs) from 23 countries, mostly ESA member states, the United States and Japan. The number of countries increases to 36 if Co-Investigators are taken into account as well.

We thank all the PIs and CoIs for their strong interest in XMM-Newton observing time and wish you good luck with the OTAC evaluation of your proposals.

Public data

SOC is constantly increasing the number of public data sets from the XMM-Newton Performance Verification and Calibration phases. An updated list of these public observations is available from:
http://xmm.esac.esa.int/user/mplan/XMM-Newton/public_list.html

CD delivery

XMM-Newton PIs are automatically informed via e-mail whenever Observation Data Files (ODF) as well as Pipeline Products (PPS) as derived from the ODF by the Survey Science Centre (SSC) for one of his/her observations is in the process of being shipped to the PI in the form of CD-ROM(s).

Normally the CD-ROM(s) should arrive after 4 weeks the latest, depending on the postal services involved.

If a PI does not receive the announced CD-ROM(s) he/she should contact the SOC via e-mail to and inform us about the missing CD(s) specifying the observation ID in the e-mail's Subject. A new CD will be created and shipped.

PIs can also investigate the status of the ODF creation, PPS production and CD-ROM delivery from the XMM-Newton Observation Status Log web page available at:
http://xmm.esac.esa.int/user/mplan/

SciSim 3.0.0 released

SciSim 3.0.0 is available for download.

Binaries are available for the following platforms:
Main stream changes w.r.t. SciSim 2.0.9 are:
You can find the software as well as additional information at:
http://xmm.esac.esa.int/scisim/


With best regards,
The XMM-Newton SOC