XMM-Newton-NEWS

CONTENTS

• Version 19.0 of the Science Analysis System (SAS) released
• Data analysis threads for SAS v19.0
• XMM-Newton science workshop 2021: "A High-Energy View of Exoplanets and Their Environments"
• ESAC trainee project 2021

VERSION 19.0 OF THE SCIENCE ANALYSIS SYSTEM (SAS) RELEASED

The XMM-Newton SAS team is pleased to announce the release of a new version of the SAS: SAS v19.0.

Binaries for diverse flavours of Linux and Mac OS X are available at

     http://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/xmm-newton/sas-download
 

The main improvements of this release can be summarised as follows:

• A new task, qpbselect, has been introduced to generate quiescent particle background (QPB) spectra or images from EPIC-pn FF data scaled by the number of discarded lines. The number of discarded lines, used as a proxy for the background level, are calculated by evselect from observation housekeeping data and stored in the keywords, DLMEAN and DLMAX.
• Error handling and documentation for epicspeccombine have been improved.
• Various updates have been made to source detection tasks, including use of esplinemap in smoothing mode and the correction of the pile-up estimate for extended sources.
• A count-rate dependent photon energy correction has been implemented for EPIC-pn BURST mode data.
• A new spatial expression, "IMAGE('imagefile')", which selects data from a spatial region where the image is non-zero, has been introduced into evselect. This is useful for defining complex regions in extended sources.
• For convenience positions may now be specified in celestial (RA, DEC) cordinates for a circle, box or annulus region expression within evselect.
• Spectra created by evselect have the keywords BACKFILE, ANCRFILE and RESPFILE set to "NONE" by default.
• SAS mosaic images have been made compatible with ds9 version 8.1.
• The task omsource has been removed, pending refurbishment.
• Preparations have been made for running the extended source analysis (esas) tasks with calibration files in standard SAS CCF format.
• SAS has been upgraded to use the latest compiler, GCC 9, by changes to several packages.
• A new infrastructure of Python in SAS has been created and several new Python tasks added to allow users to run any SAS native task from pure Python sessions, running standalone or under Jupyter Notebooks.

This version of SAS is released in two 64-bit binary versions for Linux (Centos 7.3 and Ubuntu 18.04LTS), and one for MacOS 10.15.7 (Catalina). These versions have been tested and found to run correctly on several other platforms including Centos 8, Red Hat 7, Red Hat 8 and Ubuntu 20.4LTS , High Sierra and Mojave.

DATA ANALYSIS THREADS FOR SAS V19.0

SAS analysis threads have been revised to ensure compatibility with SAS v19.0.

SAS Threads can be found at

     http://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/xmm-newton/sas-threads
 

XMM-NEWTON SCIENCE WORKSHOP 2021:
"A HIGH-ENERGY VIEW OF EXOPLANETS AND THEIR ENVIRONMENTS"

The XMM-Newton Science Operations Centre of the European Space Agency is organising the astrophysical workshop:

    A High-Energy View of Exoplanets and Their Environments

    from Monday 24th to Friday 28th May 2021

The workshop will be held as a Video Conference. We anticipate (Central European Time) afternoon sessions only.

Registration opening and abstract submission are planned for January 2021.

More information will be posted in the workshop web page:

     http://xmmworkshop.esa.int/
 

The Local Organising Committee can be contacted at

    xmmws2021@sciops.esa.int

ESAC TRAINEE PROJECT 2021

The European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC) Trainee programme offers young scientists a three to six months training contract designed to give valuable work experience and to prepare for future employment in the space industry and/or research.

The ESAC Trainee Project is open to undergraduates in the final few years of an undergraduate degree or Master's degree. Applicants should be nationals of ESA Member States or its Cooperating States.

More information about the 2021 projects, and a description of the application procedure can be found at

     https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/esac-trainees/training-opportunities

The deadline for applications is

    November 23rd 2020

In view of the current situation with regards to the COVID-19, all the 2021 traineeships will be in principle carried out remotely, from the place of residence.

Yours sincerely,

XMM-Newton SOC