XMM-Newton-NEWS


XMM-Newton-NEWS  #82,    14-Oct-2008

XMM-Newton Science Operations Centre at
ESA's European Space Astronomy Centre,
P.O. Box - Apdo. 78, 28691 Villanueva de la Cañada, 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

Contents:


XMM-Newton AO-8

The XMM-Newton eighth Announcement of Opportunity (AO-8) closed on the 10th of October 2008.

In total, 555 valid proposals were submitted requesting in total 107800 ks of science time. This Announcement of Opportunity covers a period of one year with 14500 ks of observing time available for distribution. The over-subscription factor is 7.4.

In total 51 proposals for "Large Programs" were submitted. Triggered/TOO observations are requested in 33 proposals. For the joint XMM-Newton Chandra program the SOC received 10 proposals and for the joint XMM-Newton ESO (VLT and VLTI) program 5 proposals are competing.

SOC received proposals from 397 different principal investigators from 25 countries, mostly ESA member states, the United States and Japan. The number of countries involved increases to 40 if co-investigators are taken into account as well. Considering principal investigators and co-investigators, about 1430 individual scientists were involved in the response to the eighth Announcement of Opportunity.

XMM-Newton SOC temporary unavailability (no ToO service)

The XMM-Newton Science Operations Centre will be unavailable starting on Friday October 17th (afternoon) and possibly for the whole of the weekend (October 18th and 19th) due to a scheduled power outage at ESAC. During this period, the website will be down and the Target of Opportunity alert service will be exceptionally interrupted. We regret any inconvenience caused by this unavoidable maintenance activity.


Yours sincerely,
XMM-Newton SOC