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RELEASE NOTES FOR HEASOFT 6.35.2
June 25, 2025
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The HEASoft 6.35.2 release consists primarily of updates to the
NICER software (NICERDAS v14), but includes improvements to other
parts of the suite as described below.
Please visit the following link to apply this update to an existing
HEASoft 6.35 or 6.35.1 installation:
https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/software/lheasoft/patch.html
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NICER
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NICERDAS v14:
This release provides support for NICER data after the repair
activities on January 16th. In particular, it has support for
new Measurement Processing Unit (MPU) housekeeping formats as well
as improved screening for all data taken during orbit day since
the optical light leak occurred in May 2023.
- nicerl2-screen (NEW TASK): Apply post-screening to an existing
data set, with standard screening criteria sets; change default
tseg for day data to be 100 seconds
- niautoscreen: (v1.6)
- Bug fix for lowmem screening, would only screen out MPU0 and ignore others;
- added tseg parameter
- print better reasons for screened data;
- added lowmemfrscr parameter to screen LOWMEMs by fraction of
total rather than absolute counts
- nicerclean, nicermergeclean, nicerl2: Added timerange parameter
which allows basic time filtering; defaults to removing events
immediately after an MPU reboot which are TIME < 100
- nicerl2, niprefilter2, niprefilter: New NICERV6 filter file column
set; this set restores the MPU_(OVER|UNDER|XRAY|ALL)_COUNT columns
from the MPU housekeeping, adds SUN_ELV (sun elevation),
MPU_HK_FORMAT (MPU housekeeping format) and MPU_MAIN_CYCLES
(indicator of MPU workload).
- nicerl2, nicerl3-spect, nicerl3-lc: New parameter 'evtsuffix'
which allows user to tag output files with unique suffix.
- nicerl2, nicermergeclean, niautoscreen: New parameter 'lowmemfrscr'
which screens by fraction of LOWMEM data losses compared to the
total count rate, rather than absolute rate.
- nicerl2, nicermergeclean, niautoscreen: added autoscreen_tseg to be
passed along to autoscreening and segments long pointing GTIs into
smaller sections for more fine grained control.
- nicerl3-lc (v2.3): gtifile and detlist filtering are
now explicitly applied to event files if needed
- nicerl3-spect (v1.12): gtifile and detlist filtering are now
explicitly applied to event files if needed; (v1.14) added
src{spec,group,source}num parameters to control how data and
responses are loaded
- nicermergeclean: (v1.14) Avoid crashing with empty input lists
- nifpmsel: (v1.10)
- For detlist parsing, a -DETECTOR followed by DETECTOR:[bg]ti
would unexpectedly restore the detector, now fixed;
- handle the tricky case where only one detector of an MPU survives
- nimkfmerge: (v1.3) Updated for niprefilter 3.0
- niprefilter: (v2.12) NICERV6 adds SUN_ELV column
- niprefilter2: (v3.0) Major rewrite to accomodate new HK format;
NICERV6 column set added as described above
- niprescreen: (v1.1) Check for on-board processing of noise-
ringers and disable ground-based processing accordingly
- niscorplc: (v1.1) Now creates necessary responses (Sky ARF, X-ray
and BKg RMF) so the user doesn't need to run nicerl3-spect first,
added bkgrmf parameter
- NICER SCORPEON: Increased upper limit of O neutral K line to 200
instead of 100; ScorpUtils.pm: handle case of TIMEZERO only
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EXTRACTOR / XSELECT
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- extractor:
- Added new input parameters 'maxgti', 'maxccd', and 'stride' which
control the sizes of internal arrays.
- Fixed an error in setting the DATE-* keywords which ignored leap seconds
- When writing event files new checks all extensions for DATE-* keywords
and updates them.
- Trapped potential seg fault if there are no valid GTIs.
- The 6.35.2 patch includes the changes to extractor made in 6.35.1.
- xselect: Updates to handle spaces in session names
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XIMAGE
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- Updated to fix region file appending
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XSPEC
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The HEASoft 6.35.2 release includes Xspec 12.15.0 patches a-d:
12.15.0a: Addresses an error in the AtomDB v3.1.2 files that could
cause NaNs to appear in model calculations.
12.15.0b: For users linking the Xspec model functions library
into their own programs, this allows the initialization
function to look in a secondary location for the Xspec
spectral directories if it fails to find them in the
standard place.
12.15.0c: Fixes a bug in the 'crossarf' model causing the cross-
terms to be calculated incorrectly.
12.15.0d: The relative normalizations of the 7 Lorentzians in the
feklor model were incorrect. These have been corrected
and two additional models added (bfeklor and zbfeklor)
which velocity broaden the Fe Kalpha complex.
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XSTAR
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Version 2.59g:
- Fix to type 86 data for odd z elements for Be-like ion, which had
wrong ion numbers in the data
- Added limit to exponent size in equation of state calculation which
was causing overflows for copper under some conditions
- Turned off smoothing of opacity when vturbi=0
- Fixed error which led to incorrect energy grid being used for saving
to xo01* files
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IXPE
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- ixpecalcarf: Changed the default value of the 'weight' parameter to
be 1 (neff weighting) rather than 0 (unweighted).
- ixpecalcfov: Updated the sun angle threshold (THRESH_ANGLE_DEG)
from 25.0 to 35.0 degrees
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SWIFT
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UVOT:
- uvotpict: Updated SkyView URL to skyview.gsfc.nasa.gov
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XTE
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- hxtback: Fixes for data modes other than HEXTE archive data
