XMM-Newton-NEWS


XMM-Newton-NEWS  #109,    01-Jul-2010

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 "Ultra-Luminous X-ray sources and Middle Weight Black Holes":
presentations available on-line

The XMM-Newton Workshop "Ultra-Luminous X-ray sources and Middle Weight Black Holes" (see issue #95 of this Newsletter) took place at the European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC) near Madrid from the 24th to the 26th of May 2010. About seventy astronomers from Europe, USA and Japan attended the workshop.

Presentations of the workshop and the group pictures are available on-line at:

   https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/xmm-newton/sas-workshop-2010

Refereed workshop proceedings will be published as a regular issue of "Astronomische Nachrichten (Astronomical Notes)" in 2011.

Release of a new version of the EPIC Calibration Status Document

A new version of the EPIC status of calibration and data analysis document (Issue 2.10) is now available at:

   http://xmm2.esac.esa.int/external/xmm_sw_cal/calib/

This document reflects the current calibration status and is aligned with SASv10.0 (see issue #107 of this Newsletter). A significant refinement of the pn redistribution is embodied in the new EPN_REDIST_0011.CCF, released in mid-June. Better agreement between the observed and predicted PATTERN distributions as calculated by "epatplot" for EPIC-pn Timing Mode exposures is ensured by the EPN_QUANTUMEFF_0017.CCF, which includes for the first time the RAWY-dependency of the PATTERN fraction in this mode.

New fitted Time Correlation Files (TCX) for XMM-Newton observations

Improved Time Correlation Files (TCX) are being generated for ODFs in the XMM-Newton Science Archive (see also issue #89 of this Newsletter). They reduce the scatter of absolute timing measurements in individual observations from 100 to less than 70 micro-seconds (1-sigma). Users are referred to Sect. 1.6 of the new version of the EPIC Calibration Status Document (see previous item of this Newsletter) for further details.

More information on how to retrieve the new TCX or updated ODF files is available at:

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

XMM-Newton Users Group: minutes of meeting and presentations available

The XMM-Newton Users Group met on the 12th and 13th of May 2010 at ESAC. The minutes were approved on the 23rd of June and are available, together with the presentations of the meeting, at:

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

Patch to SAS version 10.0

A second small patch to the recently released SAS 10.0.0 version (see issues #106 and #108 of this Newsletter) has been released on the 28th of June, 2010. The patch includes a fix of the task "evselect", related to a problem in the derivation of light curves with time binning close to the CCD frame times, and an extra initialization of FITSIO within "esas", to avoid problems under MacOS operating systems. We took the opportunity to release an upgraded version of epiclccorr with improved exposure correction, and modified the signal to noise calculation by the task "specgroup".

For more information and to download this patch, please go to:

   http://xmm.esac.esa.int/sas/current/sas_news.shtml

Call for XMM-Newton results with potential for ESA press releases

We are looking forward to hearing from you about exciting new results obtained with XMM-Newton observations. Such results represent an important support for the mission.

The XMM-Newton team does not have dedicated resources to systematically monitor astro-ph and the published literature for interesting new material. However, ESA does have a Media Relations Service team, who will help arranging appropriate publicity and press releases. Please remember that they can only start the work once they know that a result is available and that they need some time to accommodate the story, since press releases are organised for several projects.

Contact us through the helpdesk at:

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



Yours sincerely,
XMM-Newton SOC