ROSAT Status Report #26

June 1st 1992

AO1 AND AO2 HOLDOVER TARGETS:

"Holdover" observation list on anonymous FTP

A list of those AO1 and AO2 observations that are considered incomplete, and thus are candidates for rescheduling, is available in the GSFC anonymous FTP account under the name ao1_ao2.holdovers. Contained in this list are all priority A and B targets whose total observing time is less than 70 percent of the requested time. This list was used as one input for scheduling the first half of AO3 (June 15 - December 15). It was constructed by carefully checking the priority A and B targets from AO1 and AO2 against the total exposure time from SASS for all targets whose data have been processed. For targets whose SASS output is unavailable (observed after April 1 or scheduled but not observed) the total scheduled time has been used. For these targets, only the balance of the time will be scheduled. PI's are encouraged to check this list for discrepancies in observing times of their targets and report them to Rob Petre.

To reach the account

ftp rosserv.gsfc.nasa.gov

at the ftp login prompt the username is anonymous and the password is your user identity (say your username at your home institution). The account is captive so you will see a limited range of directories. To find the ascii file ao1_ao2.holdovers cd pub and get ao1_ao2.holdovers.

ROSAT Data processing status:

The USRSDC has been processing and shipping data at new all time high rates. The week of May 11 saw 77 ROSAT observations processed validated, verified and sent to PIs. During the week of May 18, 74 sequences were sent out. Due to a new SASS bug fix that was installed and some hardware problems, the week of May 25 was a slow one with only 30 Sequences sent out. On the average the USRSDC is processing 25 ROSAT days per work week using 2 shifts. This has been possible due to extensive work that was carried out stabilizing SASS and solving the majority of hardware archiving problems. Currently we have data in house from May 11 1992 (ROSAT day 721) and we are processing data from February 25 1992 (ROSAT day 643). The processing is only 88 days behind and the gap is closing rapidly.

CALIBRATION DATA

Some PSPC calibration data are now available in FITS file format from the anonymous ftp account. The data are located in the Calibration directory and consist of a series of PSPC pointings on a point source calibration target (AR LAC) located at various positions on the PSPC detector. These data are provided to aid the user in analysis of their own off-axis data AND ARE NOT TO BE USED FOR SCIENTIFIC ANALYSIS OF THE CALIBRATION SOURCE, NOR SHOULD THESE DATA BE PUBLISHED BY ANY US PI.

The directory contains the following files:

 File        Offset (arcmin)

rp110586     14.96
rp110587     44.31
rp110590     16.23
rp110591     18.16
rp110592     48.99
rp110593     41.37
rp110594     11.86
rp110595     10.70
rp110596     40.66
rp110597     48.70
rp110598     19.40
rp110599     17.41
rp110600     48.00
rp110601     42.52
rp110602     13.38

Note:

Some of these files have the data slightly offset within the display field, thus any attempt to cross check the offset angles by determining the distance between the source centroid position and the nominal (display pixel) field center will give erroneous results. The file rp110595 contains observation intervals which are not properly superimposed on each other. Time filtering of these data are required, using a start time of 1645080 and stop time of 1646563.

HRI calibration data have also been made available on the SAO ftp account.

To reach that account

ftp -i sao-ftp.harvard.edu

(node address 128.103.42.250) at the ftp login prompt the username is anonymous and the password is your user identity (say your username@homeinstitute). Calibration files may be found under /pub/pros/pros_2_0/xrcalfits. These are compressed unix tar files and a binary transfer is required, all of the files in the distribution directory are required. The file FILES.Z provides a summary of the directory contents. For further information contact M. Conroy mo@cfa234.harvard.edu.

First (very preliminary) Announcement ROSAT Data Analysis and Science Workshop

Date: November 4-5, 1992

Place: Park Plaza Hotel, Boston, Massachusetts

The US ROSAT Science Data Center is in the early stages of planning a brief (1.5 days) ROSAT data analysis and science workshop. The purpose of the workshop is twofold: to allow open exchange of ideas and techniques to be used for extracting the maximum amount of information from ROSAT data, and to provide a forum for discussion of what are the most important scientific issues which ROSAT can help resolve. The scientific discussions are intended to provide insight as to how to best utilize the remaining PSPC time in AO4, which will be released around that time.

Our current thinking is to have only a few invited presentations, and to have as many brief (10-15 minutes) contributed presentations as can be fit into a brief meeting. There will also be ample room for poster presentations. The emphasis will be on discussion of open science and analysis issues. The ROSAT science support staff will participate, and we hope to have members of the MPE team available for a question and answer session. By tying this workshop to the end of the Astronomical Data Analysis and Software Systems (ADASS) meeting, we also will have workstations set up for demonstrations and hands-on tutorials of all ROSAT software.

In order to make this brief meeting as productive as possible for all participants, we invite interested observers to make suggestions regarding format, topics and speakers. We also would like to know how many people are interested in participating, and in giving talks. Please send all correspondence to Karen Smale at ksmale@lheavx.gsfc.nasa.gov or lheavx::ksmale.

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