The documents most likely to be useful to the Hera user are those
pertaining to SAS. There are a number of these which users of XMM-Newton
data should be aware of. These documents include the SSC Products
Specification, Data Files Handbook, Reading Data
Products CD's (the most recent versions of these documents can be
found in the SOC Document section under
http://xmm.vilspa.esa.es/external/xmm_user_support/documentation/index.shtml),
and the SAS Users Guide
(http://xmm.vilspa.esa.es/external/xmm_sw_cal/sas_frame.shtml).
Additional information concerning
XMM-Newton data files can be found in the Interface
Control Document: Observation and Slew Data Files (XSCS to SSC)
(SciSIM to SOCSIM) (XMM-SOC-ICD-0004-SSD). This is an
impressive tome which goes into great detail about the file
nomenclature and structure. This document can be found in the
documents area of the SOC web pages:
http://xmm.vilspa.esa.es/cgi-bin/docs/DOC_list?Type=ICD.
NOTE: For observation data sets going to US PIs, the GOF
makes the data available on line after PGP encryption
and after converting
the file names to upper case. When the proprietary period for the
observation expires the data are decrypted leaving the file names
unchanged. A simple decryption script, minus the relevant keys of
course, can be found at:
ftp://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/xmm/software/decrypt.pl.
NOTE: Laura Brenneman wrote a script and accompanying help file
that gives explicit directions on how to most quickly pull over all
the files in a data set from the archive, as well as decrypting, and
uncompressing the files in preparation for data analysis. This package
can be found at:
ftp://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/xmm/software/prepare_xmm_data.tar.gz.
and contains the following files: README, decrpyt.pl, and
prepare_xmm_data.pl.