News 20230419 - XMM-Newton

XMM-Newton-NEWS

Contents:

• VERSION 21.0 OF THE SCIENCE ANALYSIS SYSTEM (SAS) RELEASED
• THE X-RAY UNIVERSE 2023

VERSION 21.0 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 v21.0.

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

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

• A major upgrade has been made to the extended source analysis system (esas) such that it is now fully integrated within the SAS. Each step of the processing has been split into a separate package, which can be called autonomously, to allow for more flexible data analysis. The esas tasks now use XMM-Newton calibration files (CCFs), which have been released for the first time together with SAS 21.
• A spatial CTI correction, based on the technique described in Sanders et al. 2020, A&A, 633, A42, has been introduced into the SAS, with a new task epspatialcti. This is implemented for EPIC-pn FF and eFF observing modes and is especially useful for the spectral analysis of extended sources.
• OM magnitude plots have the Y axis corrected so that lower-magnitude/ higher flux measurements sit above higher-magnitude / lower-flux points.
• A new task, evenergyshift, has been added. This allows an ad-hoc shift to be applied to event energies from EPIC-pn FAST mode (Timing / Burst mode) using offsets measured at line or edge energies, such as Silicon or Gold.
• Several tasks which produce plots using the PGPLOT package have been converted so that the plotting is performed by a Python script.
• Multiple improvements to source detection tasks.
• Quiescent particle background files which were supported in SAS 20 for EPIC-pn Full Frame mode are now also available for Extended Full Frame mode data using evqpb and qpbselect.
• emchain uses intermediate files with product-like names by default.
• Infrastructure has been added to SAS 21 to aid the construction of Python scripts and notebooks.

This version of SAS is released in three 64-bit binary versions for Linux (Ubuntu 20.04LTS, Ubuntu 22.04LTS and Red HAT 8.6), and one for MacOS macOS 12.6 (Monterey).

These versions have been tested and found to run correctly on several other platforms including Red Hat 7, Ubuntu 18.4LTS, BigSur and Ventura. The Monterey version has been tested on the Intel and the new Apple M1 processor.

A Docker version of SAS v21 based on the Ubuntu 22.04LTS operating system will be made available shortly.

THE X-RAY UNIVERSE 2023

As announced in a previous issue of the XMM-Newton Newsletter, The XMM-Newton Science Operations Centre of the European Space Agency is organizing the next installment of the major astrophysical symposium: "The X-ray Universe 2023" from Tuesday 13th to Friday 16th of June 2023. The symposium will be held in Athens, Greece.

This is a reminder that the early registration deadline is in about two weeks, on Friday, 5 May 2023. If you plan to attend the meeting, please register at:

Abstract submission is still open for poster presentations. Please submit your abstract here:

The block scientific programme has been published on the conference website at:

For more information visit:

Conference Registration

Registration Fee:

In person fee includes the welcome reception, coffee breaks and lunch.

Contact

Local Organising Committee:

Up-to-date information is always available via the workshop web page

Yours sincerely,

XMM-Newton SOC