Summary release note for ppsprod-18.01 ====================================== Pipeline Version: 18.01_20200110_1700 Pipeline name: ppsprod Release Date: 2020-01-10 SAS Manifest: xmmsas_20191120_1210 Summary ======= This version of the pipeline is basically the one used to reprocess all archival data available up to 2019. The few changes in SAS routines versions only reflect the upgrade to public SAS18 version. Since the reprocessed observaions public before April 2019 have been used for a major version of the EPIC Serendipitous Source Catalogue (SSC), the changes outlined below refer to the pipeline used for previous major version of the SSC catalogue, some of them were already introduced in previous pipeline versions. Improvements in calibrations are not listed here as they can be found in SAS and/or CCFs release notes. i) Extraction of source-specific products (SSP) (time-series and spectra) for individual sources has undergone a major revision. The size of the source extraction region is still optimized according to the brightness of the source, but the region to estimate the associated background is now restricted to the same CCD where the center of the source is found, except for MOS SW modes, where an annulus over the peripheral CCDs is chosen. PNG files with source and background extraction regions overlaid on count images are also new SSP products. In the case of EPIC-pn Timing mode data the location of the source in RAWX coordinate is determined as the location of maximum of the RAWX histogram. The source extraction region extends 9 RAWX columns on side of the source location and the background region is fixed to RAWX in [2,6]. If the source and background extraction regions are found to overlap or there are less than 100 counts in the histogram, the source products are not created. In the case of very strong spectra this method may produce a background with significant contribution of the source at certain energies. ii) EPIC lightcurves are produced per energy band for all exposures. A new FITS file is available under the PPS products per EPIC instrument and observation which contains lightcurves for all the available exposures in the energy bands 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 8. For TIMING mode information is given in the energy bands 2, 3, 4 and 9. The time bin size for PN Light Curves has been fixed to 20 times the frametime of the corresponding exposure mode. For MOS1/2 the method to fix the time bin size according the mean count rate has not been modified. Given the low count number per bin in most EPIC-pn lightcurves the variability tests are computed on lightcurves rebinned to an average of 20 counts per bin and the results of the tests are saved in the header of the small time bin PPS product. iii) The method to estimate the background in EPIC images has been changed from splines interpolation to local smoothing of source free regions. The new method in combination of an extra call to embadpixfind task yield a reasonable compromise between detection number and spurious content. iv) Special flagging has been included for sources detected in OM low sensitivity patch. v) Quiescent particle background (estimated from Filter-Wheel-Closed repository) and EPIC-pn out of time events are subtracted from EPIC coloured images. Other minor changes related to general info about observations environment are a) new PPS file with spacecraft orbit information as Geocentric Equatorial J2000 and Geocentric Solar Ecliptic coordinates b) new PPS file with Radiation Monitor count rates The version of SAS being used is a pipeline-specific manifest xmmsas_20191120_1210. This is based on the public SAS release 18.0.0, described at http://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/xmm-newton/sas-release-notes-1800 Documentation ============= Documentation for this pipeline can be found at: http://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/xmm-newton/pipeline and links therein.