XMM-Newton-NEWS


XMM-Newton-NEWS  #118,    24-Jan-2011

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:



Cross Calibration Status document update

The cross-calibration among the XMM-Newton instruments as well as between XMM-Newton and other missions is regularly monitored. An update of the document describing its status, aligned with SASv10.0, is now available at:

     http://xmm2.esac.esa.int/docshttps://www.cosmos.esa.int/documents/CAL-TN-0052.ps.gz

Users are also recommended to make use of the Cross-Calibration review tool:

     http://xmm2.esac.esa.int/cgi-bin/ept/preview.pl

which provides an interactive interface to the multi-instrument analysis of more than 100 calibration observations, as well as allowing to generate on the fly histograms and time-series of cross-normalisation factors among the XMM-Newton instruments in different energy bands.

Release of new EPIC-pn long-term CTI

A new EPIC-pn Charge Transfer Inefficiency (CTI) CCF constituent (EPN_CTI_0023.CCF) is now available. The accuracy of the energy reconstruction, especially for observations taken in the last ~2 years, is significantly improved with this update. The accuracy of the energy reconstruction for all EPIC-pn imaging modes has recovered the nominal ~10 eV across the whole mission.

To make use of this enhanced calibration, users need to generate calibrated event lists using a Calibration Index File (CIF) which includes the new CCF constituent. Users that are synchronising the calibration data through "rsync" or "mirror" have already downloaded the new CCF when it was released on 23 Dec 2010 and hence CIF files generated after that date contain the update. Alternatively, the new CCF can be downloaded from the SOC repository.

More information on the expected scientific quality can be found in the CCF Release Note:

     http://xmm2.esac.esa.int/docshttps://www.cosmos.esa.int/documents/CAL-SRN-0271-1-0.ps.gz

Release of RGS/EPIC-pn Rectification Factors

As announced with the SASv10.0 release notes, this version of SAS included an upgrade of the the RGS effective area determination to apply a correction for alignment of RGS and EPIC effective areas, should this be necessary. The spectral correction factors are contained in a new extension of the calibration files and were set to unity at that time.

A systematic investigation of the simultaneous response of EPIC-pn and RGS done with SASv10.0 and the current relevant calibration files has shown both instruments to agree within a slowly wavelength-dependent few percent. A simple model-fitting procedure was applied to derive an empirical set of wavelength-dependent rectification factors applied to RGS only.

A tabulation of smoothed mean RGS-pn rectification factors is given in the RECTIFICATION extension of the calibration files RGS[12]_EFFAREACORR_0008.CCF. They can be applied to the RGS response matrices through the SAS switch 'withrectification=yes' to modify the methods of the tasks rgsrmfgen and rgsproc. This switch is off by default.

More details are given in the CCF Release Note:

     http://xmm2.esac.esa.int/docshttps://www.cosmos.esa.int/documents/CAL-SRN-0269-2-0.ps.gz

Anticipated timeline for next XMM-Newton Announcement of Opportunity: AO-11

The planned key milestones for the eleventh XMM-Newton "Announcement of Opportunity" have been established. Within this AO-11 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 Opportunity23 August 2011
Due date for proposals07 October 2011 (12:00 UT)
Final OTAC approved programme    mid December 2011

For approved proposals only:

Start of phase II proposal submission10 January 2012
Closure of phase II proposal submission   03 February 2012
Start of AO-11 observationsMay 2012

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

New XMM-Newton SOC Web Page

The layout of the XMM-Newton SOC Web Page

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

has changed. While the content remains the same, the access to the different sections has been made more user friendly through the menu on the left-hand side of the page.

Workshop Announcement:
XXL: The Ultimate XMM Extragalactic Survey

In December 2010, the XXL survey, an XMM-Newton Very Large Programme, has been granted time to map two extragalactic regions of 25 deg2, at a depth of ~5x10-15 erg/cm2/s (using 10 ks observations). While the main goal of the project is to constrain the Dark Energy equation of state using clusters of galaxies (cf. http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.3182 ), it will also have lasting legacy value for cluster scaling laws and studies of AGNs and XRB.

The project is open to any scientist belonging to the international astronomical community, and interested in actively contributing to the general legacy effort.

A kick-off meeting is organised by the XMM-LSS collaboration in Bonifacio (Corsica, France) from the 2nd to the 6th of May 2011.

Workshop topics include:
Interested scientists are welcome to attend the meeting. More information is available at:

     http://arachnos.astro.ulg.ac.be/RPub/Colloques/XXL2/index.html



Yours sincerely,
XMM-Newton SOC