XMM-Newton-NEWS


XMM-Newton-NEWS  #87,    29-Jan-2009

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 Workshop "SuperSoft X-ray Sources: New Developments":
registration and abstract submission open

As announced in issue #80 of the XMM-Newton Newsletter, the XMM-Newton Science Operations Centre is organising an astrophysical workshop from Monday 18th to Wednesday 20th May 2009 at the XMM-Newton Science Operations Centre in Madrid, Spain.

The aim of the workshop is to summarise the present status of supersoft X-ray sources (SSS) research from the observational as well as the theoretical side in order to identify the most critical unsolved problems.

Registration and abstract submission for this workshop is now open.

DEADLINE FOR ABSTRACT SUBMISSION IS 13th of MARCH.

Details on the registration and abstract submission process as well as on important dates are given at:

https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/xmm-newton/2009-workshop/

9th XMM-Newton SAS Workshop

The XMM-Newton Science Operations Centre announces the 9th SAS Workshop, which will be held at the European Space Astronomy Centre of ESA (Villafranca del Castillo, Spain) between the 29th of June and the 3rd of July 2009.

SAS Workshops aim at providing XMM-Newton users with a basic introduction to the procedures and techniques to successfully reduce and analyse XMM-Newton data. The 4-day workshop is organised around 4 half-days of presentations and 4 half-days of practical training sessions. An extra day can be allocated for practical training sessions upon demand. The sessions cover all aspects of data reduction and data analysis for all the X-ray cameras on-board XMM-Newton, as well as for its Optical Monitor.

Interested persons are encouraged to send an email through the XMM-Newton Helpdesk at:

https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/xmm-newton/xmm-newton-helpdesk

no later than Tuesday, March 31, 2009.

Please specify in the subject line:

Subject: Interest in participating in the 9th XMM-Newton SAS Workshop

and provide the following information:

Name                   :
Organisation           :
Address                :
Country                :
Phone                  :
E-mail                 :
Main Research Field    :

Do you need means of transportation between pre-booked
accommodation at El Escorial and Venue at ESAC ?               : YES/NO
Will you bring your own laptop ?                               : YES/NO
Interested in having an extra 5th day for practical sessions ? : YES/NO
Would you like to have an introductory session to XSPEC ?      : YES/NO

No fee is required to attend the SAS Workshop. We regret to inform that no financial support is available for Workshop participants.

More information is available at:

https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/xmm-newton/sas-workshop-2009

Anticipated timeline for next Announcement of Opportunity

The planned key milestones for the ninth XMM-Newton "Announcement of Opportunity" have been established. Within this AO-9 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 timeline:

    Announcement of Opportunity 25 August 2009
    Due date for proposals 09 October 2009 (12:00 UT)
    Final OTAC approved programme    mid December 2009

For approved proposals only:

    Start of phase II proposal submission 11 January 2010
    Closure of phase II proposal submission    05 February 2010
    Start of AO-9 observations May 2010

The official "Announcement of Opportunity" will be made public in the XMM-Newton News and on the XMM-Newton Science Operations Centre home page.

Release of FLIX: Flux Limits from Images from XMM-Newton

The XMM-Newton Survey Science Centre (SSC) recently released an important new tool called FLIX which provides on-line X-ray upper-limit and image cutout services for XMM-Newton data.

FLIX is available from the Leicester database and archive service (LEDAS) at:

http://www.ledas.ac.uk/flix/flix.html

Provided with one or more sky positions as input, FLIX determines whether any public XMM-Newton pointing covers the position. Where image data exists, FLIX computes both point-source upper limit fluxes and encircled fluxes in user-selected XMM-Newton bands, lists any sources from the 2XMMi catalogue that lie within 30 arcseconds and extracts thumbnail XMM-Newton X-ray images centred on that point, returning results via a web table and a downloadable fits file.

XMM-Newton catalogue and data products of the COSMOS field available

The XMM-COSMOS team has completed the analysis of the 1.5 Ms XMM-Newton observation of the COSMOS field.
A catalogue of ~2000 point-like X-ray sources has been produced and released to the public. Together with the catalogue, the XMM-COSMOS team made public to the entire astronomical community a set of mosaiced images, exposure maps and sensitivity maps suitable for scientific use. The catalogue and the scientific products can be downloaded at:

http://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/data/COSMOS/

The catalogue and the data released to the community are intensively described in a paper in press by A&A and retrievable at:

http://arxiv.org/abs/0901.2347.

Up to now, the XMM-COSMOS dataset has been used in 21 refereed publications, listed at:

http://www.mpe.mpg.de/XMMCosmos/PAPERS/

Workshop announcement: High resolution X-ray spectroscopy

The workshop "High resolution X-ray spectroscopy" will be held on 2009 March 19-20 at the UCL Mullard Space Science Laboratory, UK.

The 'new beginning' with the integration of XEUS and Con-X into IXO, the many other X-ray astronomy missions under study aimed at high spectral resolution, together with the high quality data that XMM-Newton and Chandra will hopefully continue to procure for a while yet, promise further expansion and strengthening of the high resolution X-ray spectroscopy field. The 3rd "High resolution X-ray spectroscopy" workshop will take stock of what has been achieved in this field, review our current understanding and consider how to build on it, by taking advantage of future opportunities such as IXO.

For the first time a 'high resolution X-ray spectroscopy school' will be organised prior to the workshop, on 2009 March 17-18. Aimed at PhD students and postdocs working both in and outside X-ray astronomy, it will be an opportunity to learn the principles and practice of high resolution X-ray spectroscopy as applied to a range of stellar, Galactic and extragalactic sources.

More information is available from the workshop web site at:

http://www.mssl.ucl.ac.uk/~ajb/workshop3/


Yours sincerely,
XMM-Newton SOC