XMM-Newton-NEWS

XMM-Newton-NEWS #63, 12-Jan-2007

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

SOC Home Page:	https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/xmm-newton/
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/newsletter

Anticipated time line for next Announcement of Opportunity: AO-7
XMM-Newton AO-6 OTAC Results
7th XMM-Newton SAS Workshop
Meeting announcement: "XEUS: Visions of the Extreme Universe"
Workshop announcement: "Astronomical Spectroscopy & The Virtual Observatory"
Meeting announcement "High Energy Astrophysics: the keV-TeV Connection"
Extragalactic Surveys web page

Anticipated time line for next Announcement of Opportunity: AO-7

The key milestones for the seventh XMM-Newton "Announcement of Opportunity" have been established. Within this AO-7 a new call to submit proposals for observations to be performed with the XMM-Newton observatory will be issued.

To be prepared for this, please find below the anticipated time line:

Announcement of Opportunity	28 August 2007
Due date for proposals	05 October 2007 (12:00 UT)
Final OTAC approved programme	late December 2007

For approved proposals only:

Start of phase II proposal submission	14 January 2008
Closure of phase II proposal submission	09 February 2008
Start of AO-7 observations	May 2008

The official "Announcement of Opportunity" will be made public in an issue of XMM-Newton News and on the XMM-Newton Science Operations Centre Home Page.

XMM-Newton AO-6 OTAC Results

The list of proposals accepted by the AO-6 Observing Time Allocation Committee (OTAC) is available with their associated abstracts at:
http://xmm.esac.esa.int/external/xmm_news/ao6_results/

The Principal Investigators of accepted proposals have been informed about the second phase proposal submission, which will be done via the XMM-Newton Remote Proposal Submission System (XRPS). The XRPS will be closed on the 9th of February 2007 at 13:00 UT.

AO-6 observations will start to be performed in May 2007.

7th XMM-Newton SAS Workshop

The SOC announces the 7th Science Analysis System (SAS) Workshop, which will be held at ESA's European Space Astronomy Centre, ESAC, close to Madrid, Spain, from Tuesday, June 19th to Friday, June 22nd, 2007.

SAS Workshops aim at providing astronomers having little or no experience of XMM-Newton data analysis with an introduction to the procedures and techniques to successfully reduce and analyse XMM-Newton data.

About one-third of the Workshop time is devoted to presentations, and the remaining two-thirds to practical training (hands-on) sessions. During the latter, one workstation will be available for every two participants. The lecture program covers topics such as: instrument calibration status, SAS installation and set-up, spectral analysis of point-like sources with EPIC and RGS, EPIC source detection and timing analysis, analysis of extended sources with EPIC, OM data reduction and analysis, the XMM-Newton serendipitous source catalogue, and science archive.

Interested persons are invited to send an email to: xmmhelp@sciops.esa.int specifying in the Subject line:

"Interest in participating in the 7th XMM-Newton SAS Workshop"

Please providing the following information in the message:
   Name :
   Organisation :
   Address :
   Country :
   Phone :
   Fax :
   E-mail :
   Arrival Date :
   Departure Date :

Attendance is strictly limited to 20 persons to ensure proper support during the training sessions. The available places will be filled on a "first-register, first-served" basis.

More details will be published in the next weeks on the XMM-Newton SAS Workshop web page at:
    http://xmm.esac.esa.int/external/xmm_sw_cal/sas_workshop/

The deadline for submission of the applications is 20th of April 2007.

Meeting announcement: "XEUS: Visions of the Extreme Universe"

A meeting "XEUS: Visions of the Extreme Universe" will take place from 2-4 April 2007 at the Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College London, intended to bring together members of the working groups for the X-ray Evolving Universe Spectroscopy Mission (XEUS) and the wider astronomical community to focus on the key science questions in preparation for ESA's "Cosmic Visions" proposal call.

The main science themes of the meeting will be:

Evolution of large scale structure and nucleosynthesis
Co-evolution of galaxies and their supermassive black holes
Matter under extreme conditions
Observatory science

The conference is limited to 150 participants, with a registration deadline of 1st of March 2007.

The conference web page is available at:
http://astro.imperial.ac.uk/Research/Xray/xeus_meeting/

Workshop announcement: "Astronomical Spectroscopy and the Virtual Observatory"

The Research and Scientific Support Department of the European Space Agency is organising an international workshop at the European Space Astronomy Centre in Villafranca del Castillo, Spain, 21-23 March 2007 on "Astronomical Spectroscopy & The Virtual Observatory". The Workshop will be held in the framework of the EURO-VO Data Centre Alliance and Facility Centre.

The main goal of the workshop is to outline needs and challenges that astronomical spectroscopy will be facing in the coming years, and to discuss how the unique capabilities intrinsic to the Virtual Observatory (VO) concept can meet them. To achieve this goal the workshop will bring together experts in different branches of astronomical spectroscopy and scientists and engineers active in the VO international endeavour.

The deadline for workshop registration and abstract submission is the 31st of January 2007.

For more information, please visit the Workshop web page at:
http://esavo.esac.esa.int/SpectroscopyAndVOWorkshopMarch2007

Meeting announcement: "High Energy Astrophysics: the keV-TeV Connection"

In the context of the European Astronomical Society (EAS) annual meeting in Yerevan, Armenia, 20-25 August 2007 (JENAM 2007) a 2.5 day EAS symposium will be organised on high energy astrophysics.

The main goal of this meeting is to bring together the high energy astrophysics community working, not only in the space based X-ray and gamma ray energy domains (keV-GeV), but also the ground based GeV-TeV community, to cross fertilise and to harmonise future projects.

Further information on the meeting organisation (registration, hotels etc) can be found at:
http://www.aras.am/JENAM-2007/

The deadline for abstract submission is the 1st of May 2007.

Extragalactic Surveys web page

The Chandra X-ray Center has put together a community resource web site with the following objectives:

to compile a list of recent and ongoing surveys which include Chandra and XMM-Newton X-ray data and to provide links to the surveys' main web sites;
for each X-ray survey to list all the surveys undertaken at other wavelengths in the same area of the sky and include some survey characteristics and results;
to provide a tabular format of the collected information. This table of X-ray and multiwavelength surveys has the goal of being a "living" document that can and should be continuously updated if new data is collected or new results and numbers are obtained and published;
to facilitate survey science by also providing links to public data, catalogues, and other products for the various surveys.

To begin with, only X-ray surveys executed with XMM-Newton and Chandra and with total exposure time greater than 200 ksec have been included in the compilation.

The page is available at:
http://cxc.harvard.edu/xraysurveys/

Yours sincerely,
XMM-Newton SOC