XMM-Newton-NEWS


XMM-Newton-NEWS  #98,    14-Oct-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 AO-9 closure

The XMM-Newton ninth Announcement of Opportunity (AO-9) closed on the 9th of October 2009.

In total, 539 valid proposals were submitted requesting in total 111688 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 7.7.

In total 70 proposals for "Large Programs" were submitted. Triggered/TOO observations are requested in 34 proposals. For the joint programs the SOC received 11 proposals.

SOC received proposals from 399 different principal investigators from 24 countries, mostly ESA member states, the United States and Japan. The number of countries involved increases to 35 if co-investigators are taken into account as well. Considering principal investigators and co-investigators, about 1400 individual scientists were involved in the response to the ninth Announcement of Opportunity.

New version of the XMM-Newton Data Files Handbook released

A revised version of the XMM-Newton Data Files Handbook is now available on the XMM-Newton Proposer's Info and Manuals web page at:

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

under the subsection 'Data Handling'.

The Data Files Handbook is intended as a reference book with descriptions of all files that an XMM-Newton user might encounter. The main chapters are descriptions of uncalibrated files (known as ODF), calibration files (known as CCF), and calibrated events files for each instrument (event files produced by the SAS tasks). It also contains a brief summary of the pipeline products.

Conference "High-resolution X-ray Spectroscopy: past, present and future":
deadline for abstract submission

As announced in issue #95 of the XMM-Newton Newsletter, the conference

"High-resolution X-ray Spectroscopy: past, present and future"

will be held on March 15-17, 2010 in Utrecht, The Netherlands.

The deadline for abstract submission for an oral presentation is November 1st, 2009. The deadline for early registration is January 15th, 2010.

More information and links to the abstract submission and registration pages are available from the conference website at:

    http://www.sron.nl/xray2010/



Yours sincerely,
XMM-Newton SOC