Throughout this Primer, data from the HEASARC archive are used to illustrate how to run tasks for each instrument on XMM-Newton; new users are encouraged to use these sample data, though in should be noted that any data from the relevant instrument will do. Information about the example datasets are in Table 6.1.
| Instrument | Chapter | ObsID | Object |
| EPIC | 7 | 0147511601 | Lockman Hole |
| EPIC (Timing mode) | 7.6 | 0122700101 | G21.5-09 |
| RGS | 8 | 0134520301 | AB Dor |
| OM (Image mode) | 9.3 | 0123700101 | Lockman Hole |
| OM (Fast mode) | 9.4 | 0411081601 | Mkn 421 |
| OM (Grism mode) | 9.5 | 0125320801 | BPM 16274 |
Regardless of which instrument you are interested in, one task is necessary to prepare the data for processing, odfingest. To demonstrate odfingest, and a host of other tasks in §7, we will use the Lockman Hole data with ObsID 0147511601, though any dataset will work equally well.
To begin, either run anonymous Hera by clicking on the ``H'' next to the dataset
in the archive (see §4), or download the dataset from the HEASARC
archive and initialize standard Hera (see §4.1 and §
4.2, respectively). Select all the zipped files in
the ODF directory and unzip them; right-clicking on the selection will bring up
the option. (This takes a long time.)
The task odfingest extends the Observation Data File (ODF) summary
file with data extracted from the instrument housekeeping data files and
the calibration database. It is required for
reprocessing the ODF data with the pipeline tasks, as well as for many other
tasks, and it is only necessary to run it once on any dataset. If for some
reason odfingest must be rerun, you must first delete the earlier
file it produced. This file largely follows the naming convention
described in §5.3.3, but has SUM.SAS appended to it.
Hera will automatically set the environment parameter SAS_ODF
to the SUM.SAS file in the active dataset's ODF directory, if one exists.
If there is no SUM.SAS file, the SAS_ODF variable maintains its default
value (the dataset's ODF directory).
To run odfingest from the GUI:
To run odfingest from the Command Window, type:
In the Command Window, the command and parameters will be echoed, and dialog
from the task will be shown. The warnings can be ignored. The prompt will
return when it is complete.
At this point, the data is ready to be repipelined and analyzed. Data from the EPIC camera is discussed in §7, the RGS is in §8, and the OM is in §9.