Minutes US INTEGRAL User's Committee (IUC) Meeting ================================================== January 14th, 2009 ================== NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center ================================== Participants ============ US IUC : M. Leising R.E. Rothschild K. Hurley M. McConnell J.A. Tomsick NASA INTEGRAL Program Scientist : W. Sanders US INTEGRAL Project Scientist : N. Gehrels US INTEGRAL Deputy Project Scientist : J. Tueller US INTEGRAL GOF : S. Sturner K. Pottschmidt INTEGRAL-SPI CoI : G. Skinner List of Action Items ==================== ACTION ITEM 1: Neil Gehrels will ask Thierry Courvoisier (ISDC) whether a letter of support or similar from NASA will be helpful considering continued Swiss funding for the ISDC. ACTION ITEM 2: Neil Gehrels will look into the possibility of offering joint Swift time with INTEGRAL proposals. ACTION ITEM 3: Steve Sturner and Wilt Sanders will work out a plan for the AO-7 GO funding taking the related IUC discussions into account. As for previous AOs two letters will be sent out to the US INTEGRAL community. One letter will be sent now, alerting to the ESA call for observing proposals and stating that GO funding is forseen (without $ amounts), and one in May 2009 when the list of successful observing proposals is known (NASA call for budget proposals, stating the level of funding available). A similar procedure is foreseen for the associated proposals later in 2009, depending on the availability of funds. ACTION ITEM 4: Steve Sturner will provide Wilt Sanders with the AO-6 GO statistics, for US contributions as well as for all contributions (to allow consistent comparison with other missions), and with updated numbers for earlier AOs as far as available from ESA. ACTION ITEM 5: All participants are to gather input for the 2010 Senior Review proposal over the year of 2009. ACTION ITEM 6: The GOF and the IUC shall send a letter to the US INTEGRAL community, encouraging the submission of INTEGRAL proposals and the publication of INTEGRAL results (date TBD). Minutes ======= * Gehrels --------- Welcome. Introduction of Mark Leising as new US IUC chair. Reminder of main IUC tasks: advise regarding Guest Observer (GO) program, prepare Senior Review proposal. * Leising --------- Welcome. * All ---- Brief self-introduction. * Skinner --------- Report from the ESA INTEGRAL User's Group (IUG) meeting June 2008 at ESAC, Madrid: - For operations INTEGRAL & XMM are now considered one joint item. - Presentation of key ESA dates: INTEGRAL & XMM operations have been approved through Dec 2012 by the ESA SPC, subject to a rolling 2 year review. Final approval following the Oct 2008 SSAC approval will be given by the SPC in Feb 2009. In fall 2010 a request will go to the SSAC (and then SPC) for extension from Dec 2012 to Dec 2014. * All ----- Discussion concluding in emphasizing the importance of the ISDC Data Center in Geneva as location of the primary INTEGRAL data archive (processing pipelines). ACTION ITEM 1: Neil Gehrels will ask Thierry Courvoisier (ISDC) whether a letter of support or similar from NASA will be helpful considering continued Swiss funding for the ISDC. * Sturner --------- NASA 2008 Senior Review Results: - Hand-out of the INTEGRAL Senior Review proposal and the review panel report. - INTEGRAL ranked 8 of 10, considered to be in the expected range for a non-NASA-led mission. - INTEGRAL funded at reduced level in FY09, at minimum level in FY10, will be invited again to the next Senior Review in 2010. - Resulting changes in 2009: 2 GOF positions @GSFC reduced to 1. 2 GOF positions @ISDC reduced to 0. GO funding per proposal at the same level as before. Funding of US instrument teams (UCB, UCSD) phased out. (Detailed information about which cuts were made was especially requested by Wilt Sanders.) - All: Senior Review / funding related remarks: HST will be added to the list of missions for the next Senior Review -- creating an even bigger imbalance between small and large missions. For some missions funding will at some point shift from GO to ADP (next: Spitzer). Multi-mission projects can already now be proposed for through ADP (e.g., Chandra/HST). Points to emphasize (even more strongly) in next INTEGRAL Senior Review proposal: + Synergy with Fermi and Swift. + Unique coverage above 100 keV (better timing and spectra than Swift). + Line studies (will, e.g., be the focus of future Russian projects). + GOF funding has been reduced for the sake of GO funding. * Sturner --------- NASA GO Program AO-6 and Beyond: - In AO-6 US PIs and CoIs were funded at a level of up to $40k and $10k per proposal, respectively. Only one CoI budget of $10k is allowed per observing proposal. Only one budget is allowed for Key Program (KP) associated proposals that were accepted under more than one KP with the same science objective. - Category A targets, KP associated proposals, and GRB proposals were funded immediately, category B, C and TOOs will be funded at observation (budget proposal only required after observation). - Statistics for AO-6: Total number of accepted US PI proposals: 16 (total 142) Accepted KP associated US PI proposals (of the 16): 9 (total 96) Accepted proposals with foreign PI and a US CoI: 63 - Hand-out of the ESA letter of January 12,2009, containing the call for AO-7 observing proposals. - AO-7 will have 2 separate ESA proposal calls, one for observing proposals containing mainly time for Key Programs (submission deadline February 22nd, 2009) and one for associated proposals (for data rights) later in 2009 (no associated proposals will be allowed for Russian observing proposals). - AO-6 and AO-7 will be extended to adjust the AO cycle to ESA's calendar year based funding cycles. ACTION ITEM 2: Neil Gehrels will look into the possibility of offering joint Swift time with INTEGRAL proposals. - All: Discussion of options for the GO funding in AO-7: + Separate budget calls for observing and associate proposals? Preliminary consensus: yes. + Keep funding CoIs? Preliminary consensus: yes, if PI grants do not decrease below $30k. + Time of providing funds? Preliminary consensus: as before, i.e., when proposal selection results become available. + How to fit the extended AO-7 schedule and the 2 phase program to NASA's FY schedule? Preliminary consensus: to be planned in detail between Steve Sturner and Wilt Sanders. ACTION ITEM 3: Steve Sturner and Wilt Sanders will work out a plan for the AO-7 GO funding taking the related IUC discussions into account. As for previous AOs two letters will be sent out to the US INTEGRAL community. One letter will be sent now, alerting to the ESA call for observing proposals and stating that GO funding is foreseen (without $ amounts), and one in May 2009 when the list of successful observing proposals is known (NASA call for budget proposals, stating the level of funding available). A similar procedure is foreseen for the associated proposals later in 2009, depending on the availability of funds. * Sanders --------- NASA HQ Report: - Slides: + SMD budget by science theme + Restructure Crosswalk + Budgets by program, mission (FY07 to FY13) + Astrophysics Division missions R&A elements + Astrophysics Division missions GO funding pie chart + Astrophysics Division missions GO statistics incl. oversubscription + Senior Review results - Current numbers seem to indicate an 83% proposal success rate for INTEGRAL (based on AO-5), higher than for any other mission. This is problematic since it might raise the question of overfunding. However, this picture is not totally accurate since: + Numbers are not up to date or comparable to those quoted for the other missions (US contributions only vs. totals). + The structure of the INTEGRAL observing program is different from most X-ray missions (long observations). ACTION ITEM 4: Steve Sturner will provide Wilt Sanders with the AO-6 GO statistics, for US contributions as well as for all contributions (to allow consistent comparison with other missions), and with updated numbers for earlier AOs as far as available from ESA. * Pottschmidt ------------- GOF Activities: - Personnel changes following the Senior Review 2008 results: + Both GOF positions @ ISDC have been cut. + Katja Pottschmidt is transitioning from the INTEGRAL GOF to the Suzaku GOF @ GSFC. - Summary of main GOF tasks and their implementation in 2008, e.g., organizing the Senior Review proposal, maintaining the US INTEGRAL archive and web pages (as part of HEASARC), representing INTEGRAL at conferences (booth at the AAS & HEAD meetings), INTEGRAL data analysis support for US users. - Public science window data are kept up to date in the HEASARC archive (currently including data up to revolution 627), they are downloaded from the ISDC as they become available. - Reminder: Data download method using the wget script provided by Browse (one revolution amounts to ~8 GB). - Introduction of the 5 main INTEGRAL catalogs in HEASARC Browse. Data download statistics and Browse hits per month in 2008. Download amounts per year are on a level comparable to the other non-NASA-led missions XMM and Suzaku (not surprisingly considerably smaller than for RXTE and Swift, though). * Pottschmidt for the ISDC -------------------------- Based on slides provided by Volker Beckmann, ISDC's INTEGRAL Operations Coordinator. ISDC status and Perspectives: - New data distribution type: From January 2009 onward, PIs are given immediate access to their data, i.e., the near realtime data which are available a few hours after the observation has been made. - OSA 8.0: Its release foreseen for April/May 2009. Main improvements: New sky deconvolution software for JEM-X, new ARF calibration file for IBIS-ISGRI, alternative extraction software spimodfit for SPI will be implemented in addition to the current SPI OSA. - Revision 3 data: Reprocessing of all low level data (science window data) will start soon (February 2009, duration ~4 months). This will correct msec jumps in the time correlation. The data structure will not change. The GOF at GSFC is prepared to copy the revision 3 data from the ISDC (a rate array, tapes, and a tape machine have been purchased). - New archive format for high level results: High level results in form of astrophysical parameters (fluxes in several energy bands and more) per sky pixel per science window will be archived. Tools to create images, spectra, and light curves based on the sky pixel input have been developed and are currently being tested. Foreseen to be released in a few months. * Skinner & other IUC/GOF Workshop Participants ------------------------------------------------ Report on the 7th INTEGRAL Workshop, held September 2009 in Copenhagen: - The workshop was on 'The INTEGRAL view of Compact Objects' but this was interpreted broadly. In discussion two of the most notable results that had come from INTEGRAL were said to be the Crab polarization and the 511 keV work. These were covered only briefly at the workshop (the latter not obviously falling within the scope of the meeting and the former because the team responsible were not present). More prominent was the work on SFXTs, to which Integral has contributed extensively. A report that a class of long-lag GRBs tend to lie close to the super-galactic plane was discussed as was the long term prospects for survey work with Integral vis-a-vis Swift/BAT. - The next workshop is planned to be in Dublin in 2010. No special topic is proposed. * Research Reports ------------------ - Hurley: Observation of 4 magnetar-like bursts from SGR 0501+4516 with INTEGRAL on August 27 and 28, 2008. - Rothschild: (1) Models for the distribution of the diffuse 511 keV emission in the Galaxy which take propagation into account are consistent with 511 keV intensities measured by INTEGRAL-SPI. (2) Presentation of the broad band spectrum of the bright AGN Centaurus A up to a few 100 keV, including INTEGRAL PICsIT data, indication for two states. - Pottschmidt: Monitoring of the persistent black hole binary GRS 1758-258 with RXTE and INTEGRAL from 2003 to 2008, indication of a "hard tail" above 400 keV (based on INTEGRAL PICsIT data). - Tomsick: Recent results from multi-mission studies of three binary systems -- IGR J16207-5129 (a HMXB, the compact object is probably a neutron star, initially discovered by INTEGRAL), H 1743-322 (a black hole transient, the early phase of the 2008 outburst has been observed with INTEGRAL), Cyg X-3 (a HMXB showing strong radio flaring, observed in the INTEGRAL Cygnus region Key Program). * Senior Review 2010 Preparation -------------------------------- - See discussion notes above. - Schedule of preparatory meetings: (1) Next US IUC meeting: December 2nd, 2009. (2) Telecon(s) early 2010. ACTION ITEM 5: All participants are to gather input for the 2010 Senior Review proposal over the year of 2009. ACTION ITEM 6: The GOF and the IUC shall send a letter to the US INTEGRAL community, encouraging the submission of INTEGRAL proposals and the publication of INTEGRAL results (date TBD).