ROSAT Guest Observer Facility

ROSAT Status Report #55:

Apr 19, 1993





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	*** New Location for ROSAT Anonymous FTP: ***
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The Office of Guest Investigator Programs (OGIP) is consolidating all anonymous FTP accounts to one location for ease of administration and to avoid duplication and confusion. The new location will be at the following address:

heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov = 128.183.8.233

The legacy FTP structure is in place, and much of the ROSAT files have already been copied to their new locations (described below). Users can start using the account now, although the old rosserv ftp account will remain in place for several weeks, while the changeover occurs. Future ROSAT email status reports will provide incremental updates on the content of the ROSAT legacy ftp account.

Legacy will be the main interface between the OGIP and the user community. OGIP is the umbrella office over the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC), the Compton Science Support Center (GROSSC), and the guest observer support centers for ROSAT, ASCA (Astro-D), and XTE. A common directory structure has been developed for the FTP account, and that commonality extends to each mission.

The user, upon entering the anonymous FTP account area, will see a main directory divided by satellite mission. The current contents at the main directory level are:


  ariel5  asca    bbxrt     compton  cosb      documents  einstein
  exosat  ginga   retrieve  rosat    software  vela5b

The non-mission directories (documents, retrieve, software) are meant to be mission-INdependent directories. A brief description of each follows.

  • documents: general documents (GSFC GOF User's Guide, PROS flashcards, etc.)
  • retrieve: the location where BROWSE users will go to find data they are FTP-ing back to their site (NOTE: NOT CURRENTLY IMPLEMENTED, as BROWSE IS NOT YET UP AND RUNNING ON LEGACY)
  • software: general software programs or packages (such as XSPEC)

The mission directories (exosat, rosat, ...) contain mission-dependent information. Under each satellite, there will be another layer of directories, again uniform from mission to mission. The entries the user will see are:

  • calib_data Calibration data and related issues
  • data archived data
  • doc documentation, user handbooks, FAQ files, online memos...
  • nra_info Information about the NASA Research Announcements
  • problems Known bugs and problems with the mission
  • publications summaries or preprints
  • software Software unique to the satellite
  • timelines timelines for the satellite

***Special Notes***

1) directory and filenames names are now uniformly lower case, except for the README files.

2) calib_data is in fact a symbolic link to the ROSAT part of the OGIP calibration database. Users should be aware that when they "cd" to calib_data they will move out of the main ROSAT ftp tree (and into the .caldb tree).

The only consequence of the symbolic link is that users cannot get from calib_data back to the rosat area using the "cd ../" command. Users can, however, return to the ROSAT area at any time using "cd /rosat". A future status report will describe the calib_data area in more detail.

3) the ascii versions of the pspc response matrices are stored as calib_data/pspc/cpf/old/pspcc_93jan12.rsp_ascii etc. Users are however, encouraged to use the xspec FITS format matrices which are stored with the same root names (but .rmf extension) in the calib_data/pspc/cpf directory. Users require xspec version 8.0 upwards to use the FITS files. FITS format response matrices are compatible with both FITS PHA/PI files and old style xspec .pha files.

4) Multi-mission software (XANADU, IRAF/PROS, IDL etc) will be stored in the top level software area (accessed at the same level as the top level mission directories). The rosat/software subdirectory is for subroutines etc that are ROSAT specific and which have not been integrated into an established software environment (such as IRAF), it is also an area for test software.

It is the plan that the above directories will be uniform from mission to mission, so the user will, after a few uses, know where information is located whether working on ARIEL-5 or ROSAT or ASCA. It is only when the user has penetrated to this level that the directories will reveal the mission dependent structure. That structure, FOR ROSAT, is:

  • pspc Information specific to the ROSAT PSPC
  • hri Information specific to the ROSAT HRI

Data formats will be uniformly written in FITS (Flexible Image Transport System) format (for a description of the FITSIO package and related issues, see the article by W. Pence in LEGACY, vol. 1, 14, 1992). For a user FTPing FITS files, be certain to set 'binary' transfer mode.

Files from the old ROSAT rosserv anonymous ftp account have been copied over to the legacy account. In addition to those, the ROSAT GOF are currently in the process of making technical memos available in an online format (tex, latex and postscript files) and these will reside in the rosat/doc area. Future status reports will describe the rosat/doc subdirectory in more detail.

A larger description of the legacy anonymous FTP account is available in S. Drake, LEGACY, 3, in press, 1993.

New version of RPS

Changes have been made to the RPS software and investigators who used RPS for their ROSAT AO4 proposals, should obtain the new version of RPS before submitting ASCA proposals.

A few modifications were made to the RPS software as of 4/14/93. Please make sure you obtain a copy of the latest version, otherwise your electronically submitted proposal may get sent to the wrong account.

RPS is available from anonymous ftp on legacy (described above). The software is in the asca/nra_info/rps subdirectory.

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This file was last modified on Wednesday, 20-Oct-2021 11:07:15 EDT

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