XMM-NEWTON PROPOSAL & PLANNING TOOLS
IMPORTANT - READ THIS
Please note that final reports for XMM-Newton GO grants are required upon completion of the grant award period. Additional instructions for submitting final grant recipient reports, as well as a required form, can be found here. Yearly progress reports are also required.
AO-12 funding through the GOF is only available for US PI science proposals accepted at the A level. All qualifying PIs have been notified. US PIs (and lead US Co-Is of foreign PI proposals) of lower ranked proposals accepted at the B level (but NOT at the C level) may apply for funding through the ADAP. For the analysis of all XMM data which are no longer proprietary, funding proposals may be submitted through the ADAP.
AO-12 Call For Budget Proposals
AO-12 Budget Proposal Schedule:
| DATE | EVENT |
|---|---|
| 10 May 2013 | Release of AO-12 NASA GO Budget Announcement (managed by the GSFC GOF) |
| 29 July 2013, 4:30 PM EDT | Closure of AO-12 Budget Submission Process |
| August-September 2012 | Results of AO-12 Budget Process Announced |
NASA has released a call for budget proposals in support of accepted XMM-Newton AO-12 Catagory A US PI science proposals. The budget process is open only to guest observers whose primary affiliation is with a US institution.
The current schedule for the review of the budget proposals is listed above. Note, however, that the dates of events are subject to change.
Useful pages and sites:
- The NASA XMM-Newton AO-12 Budget Solicitation Letter from Dr. Lou Kaluzienski for budget proposals
- The Budget Proposal document -- the longer description of the budget process
- The Budget Guide document -- An ABC Guide for submitting budget proposals
- The Budget Proposal Supplement -- A FAQ page for the budget process
- The Budget Form Explanation -- Detailed instructions for filling out the budget form
- The ARK RPS system
- ARK RPS Help
- Documents and Forms (FTP and HTML) -- Links to budget-related forms
- The NASA XMM-Newton AO-12 "Dear Colleague" Letter from Dr. Louis Kaluzienski for science proposals
- The XMM-Newton GOF at NASA/GSFC -- home page for the GOF with project related information and links
- The XMM-Newton Mission Description -- a short introduction to the XMM-Newton
- The NASA Office of Space Science "Guidebook for Proposers" -- The main NASA documentation for proposals
READ THESE
Important Notes, Changes, and Guidelines for AO-12:
Changes for AO-11 which are still in force:
- There are two new assurance forms that are required for processing of government grants. One says that no funds will be made available to ACORN as well as that the recipient has no outstanding federal tax liabilities. The other states that no funds will be used to further any collaborations with Chinese organizations. These new forms can be found with other relevant ones through FTP or HTML.
Changes for AO-10 which are still in force:
- Proposals will no longer be submitted electronically. Instead, a CD
containing three PDF files must be submitted with the paper hardcopy. The
required files are:
- the ARK RPS-generated PDF file containing the Cover Page, General Form, and Budget Form
- the budget justification, support form, and CV, combined into one PDF file
- the four or five page scientific justification from the ESA observation proposal
- Suggestions for concatenating PDF files are reproduced here from the RPS website.
Q: How do I concatenate two or more PDFs into a single PDF in order to satisfy the file upload requirement for proposal submission?
Some missions may require that a single PDF be uploaded as a requirement for a successful proposal submission. If you have multiple documents that need to be combined in order to create a single PDF, here are some suggestions: First, if the documents are not already in PDF format, it's best to combine them in some word processor first before generating your PDF. If that's not possible, then you will need to use some software to concatenate PDFs. There are many free software packages available for doing this. We recommend doing a web search for the latest information, but here are some possibilities:
- MergePDF.net and PDFConverter.com — free web services; no software to install.
- Preview (in Mac OS X 10.6.x or higher), Combine PDFs, PDFLab — Mac OS X applications
- ArduoPDFMerger, PrimoPDF, PDFCreator — Windows applications
- pdftk — Linux (and other platforms) command line tool
- We make no endorsement of the above software; these are simply some tools that we found in our web searching.
Changes for AO-7 which are still in force:
- By instructions from NASA HQ, subgrants are no longer allowed. Funds to Co-Is at secondary institutions must be routed through the primary institution.
- For those with appointments at both US and foreign institutions the fraction of US and foreign support and time spent in each country must be listed in the budget narrative. This may affect the fair-share estimate. Also, the appointment with the US institution should be expected to continue.
- Charging of home/home office internet connection to the grant is not allowed.
- Charging of professional association dues (e.g., AAS dues) to the grant is not allowed.
- Charging of travel expenses of foreign Co-Is to the grant is not allowed (e.g., you can't bring your European colleague to the US for the collaboration).
- CV's are no longer optional, they are required. The CV must also include a list of at least your most recent and important publications.
- For any requested travel, specific costs must be listed in the budget justification, even if the event is subject to change. (E.g., 2008 Winter AAS meeting, Austin, Texas, Airfare $XXX, Hotel $XXX, Registration $XXX, Board $XXX, Ground Transportation $XXX, Incidentals $XXX.
- Your institution's Cage Code is required on the budget form.
The AO-12 Science Proposal Submission Process is Closed. The information below is left here only for reference.
AO-12 Call For Science Proposals
Schedule:
| DATE | EVENT |
|---|---|
| 2012 August 21 | Release of AO-12 Announcement |
| 2012 October 5, 12:00 UT | Deadline for AO-12 Submissions |
| Mid December 2012 | Results of AO-12 Announced |
| 08 January 2013 | Start of SOC phase II proposal submission (entering of observation details through the SOC) |
| 01 February 2013 | Closure of SOC phase II |
| May 2013 - May 2014 | Period of AO-12 Observations |
AO-12 Science Proposal Information:
SOC AO-12 home page
| Information | Location |
|---|---|
| Text of SOC XMM-NEWTON NEWS #139 - AO-12 Announcement | ASCII |
| ESA AO-12 Letter from Prof. David Southwood | |
| NASA AO-12 "Dear Colleague" Letter from Dr. L. J. Kaluzienski | ASCII |
| ESA Policies and Procedures for the XMM-Newton AO-12 | HTML, PDF (copies of SOC files) |
| XMM-Newton Advanced Planning of Observations | SOC Online |
| XMM-Newton Observation Lokator (check if a target has been observed or is awaiting observation by XMM-Newton) |
SOC Online |
| XMM-Newton Visibility Checker Tool | SOC Online |
| XMM-Newton Users' Handbook (UHB) | SOC Online, GSFC Online, PDF (15 Mb) |
| XMM-Newton SOC RPS Help | SOC Online |
| XMM-Newton Specific RPS Help | SOC Online |
| XMM-Newton SOC Latex Template (Mandatory, and note that all sections included in the template must fit within the page limitations) |
TEX |
| XMM-Newton Proposers' Generic Help | SOC Online, or the GSFC GOF: xmmhelp@athena.gsfc.nasa.gov |
AO Science Proposal Submission
Proposals must be electronically submitted directly to the XMM-Newton SOC through the SOC's RPS facility. NOTE: This is different from the NASA/GSFC XMM-Newton RPS system which is only used for NASA XMM-Newton budget proposals (not necessarily for AO-10). The submission process has been simplified reducing the number of detector-specific details. Successful PIs will need to use the SOC's XRPS to submit observation details for their accepted targets at a later date.
Please Note
The XMM-Newton SOC highly recommends the use of:
- the on-line documentation because it contains updated links to references in the text
- the Scientific Justification LaTeX Template
Using the LaTeX Template File
Use of the provided LaTeX template to write the scientific justification is highly recommended. Proposers may submit their justifications either in one or two column format. Instructions to activate a specific column format are provided in the LaTeX template.Proposal justifications MUST be submitted as one file in Portable Document Format (PDF). A PDF file can be generated from the LaTeX template in one of two ways:
- Use a LaTeX installation which allows you to create PDF files directly
from the .tex file (e.g. pdflatex). Some installations of pdflatex do not
allow you to include postscript figures. In this case you might use method 2.
-
Use ps2pdf (preferably version 1.4) to convert a postscript file to PDF:
> latex file.tex
> dvips -Ppdf -G0 -o file.ps file.dvi
> ps2pdf14 file.ps file.pdf
- Users must make sure that generated pdf output from the template is complete both when displayed with a viewer (acroread) and when printed on paper. LaTeX installations vary greatly and therefore it might not be possible to get all proposals to come out correctly with a single text page layout. In some cases the user will have to adjust the \topmargin=-7mm command in the template to vertically center the text.
- The page limit of 4 pages (5 pages only for justifications of "Large Programs" and "Very Large Programs") includes everything of your to-be-submitted proposal justification. Sections 4 and 5 (on previous work and publications) have to be included within the page limit, too.
- You are free to include color images in your proposal justification. Proposals are distributed to OTAC in electronic form. However, the scientific content of the images should still remain extractable when displayed or printed in black and white only.
- The proposal justification can be created both in single and in two-column format. Instructions on how to switch between these two layouts are given in the LaTeX template.
-
The font size (11pt) is mandatory.
All questions regarding XMM-Newton proposal submission should be directed to the XMM-Newton Helpdesk.
AO Science Proposal and Planning Tools
SciSim - SciSim is the XMM-Newton project observation modeling tool. It incorporates all instrument calibration information to the greatest extent possible. This includes a detailed ray tracing with the mirror reflectivities and geometric and obscuration effects. It also includes details of the detectors and their responses and artifacts. SciSim should be used for the most accurate analysis of XMM-Newton data, particularly for complex sources and confused regions. (SOC link) FLIX - FLIX scans the public data products used to make the 2XMMi catalogue. For positions of interest it estimates the likely upper-limit to detectable flux. It also estimates the actual flux at that position from the counts in a small circle and the estimated background level. FLIX produces a FITS binary table of all results, and HTML output for selected energy bands.PIMMS and WebPIMMS - The WebPIMMS package, which is already familiar to many X-ray astronomers has been updated to include the X-ray instruments of XMM-Newton observatory. It provides a convenient method for calculating the expected coarse count rates and pile-up effects for sources with a variety of spectra. WebPIMMS calculates the count rates directly from input spectral parameters as well as by converting from source count rates observed by other X-ray observatories (with spectral form and absorption also as inputs). PIMMS and WebPIMMS have been updated to use in-orbit calibration results consistent with the current SAS V7.1.
Xspec - Xspec is a spectral analysis package for X-ray astronomy. Besides fitting observed and model spectra (e.g., SciSim or QuickSim output), it can also be used to simulate spectra.QuickSim (manual and code) - QuickSim was written to provide a faster (than SciSim) but not so complete modeling of XMM-Newton EPIC observations. It should be considered a PIMMS for imaging. QuickSim provides reasonably accurate modeling of the energy and angular responses (PSFs) of the EPIC instruments to a variety of spectral models and angular distributions. Temporal sinusoidal variations can be incorporated in simulations as well. QuickSim also models the intrinsic detector background and the cosmic diffuse background (although at higher energies this is problematic as much of the background will be resolved out). The output of QuickSim can be used by Xselect, Ximage, and various other data analysis packages. The linux code has been updated since AO-4 (for solaris machines please use the AO-4 code and data files), but not for other platforms (it is a work in progress). The effective area, redistribution matrix, and thermal emission spectral files have been updated.
WebSpec - WebSpec provides spectral simulations of XMM-Newton EPIC (and other X-ray observatory instruments) observations. WebSpec is based on the Xspec package.
Response Files - Information on canned intrument response files can be found at the SOC Calibration Area. EPIC RMFs are available from the SOC and GOF (MOS and PN). Information on the use of the files can be found at the SOC. Response files are available for the RGS from the SOC and GOF. Response files are available for the OM from the SOC and GOF. Also, the RMFs and ARFs used for PIMMS and WebPIMMS are available. These RMFs and ARFs were calculated for EPIC full frame mode observations with an extraction radius of 10 arc minutes.
Browse - Browse provides access to the XMM-Newton target and observation database.
Target Visibility Tools - XMM-Newton Target Visibility Checker checks when target directions are available for XMM-Newton pointings (SOC link). There is also a HEASARC Viewing Tool.
Coordinate Conversion - The HEASARC tool Coco provides a simple tool for converting between coordinate systems.
X-ray Background Intensities - The HEASARC X-ray Background Tool provides ROSAT All-Sky Survey cosmic X-ray background intensities.
NH - The HEASARC tool nH provides neutral hydrogen column densities.
Help Desks
The XMM-Newton Helpdesk at the SOC provides a web-based tool to send technical queries to mission specialists and programmers, and also search the Helpdesk archive.Mail the XMM-Newton US GOF directly at xmmhelp@athena.gsfc.nasa.gov for all other XMM-Newton questions.
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If you have any questions concerning XMM-Newton send e-mail to xmmhelp@lists.nasa.gov