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An EPIC Data Processing and Analysis Primer

While a variety of analysis packages can be used for the following steps, the SAS was designed for the basic reduction and analysis of XMM-Newton data (extraction of spatial, spectral, and temporal data); therefore, it will be used here for demonstration purposes.

NOTE: For PN observations with very bright sources, out-of-time events can provide a serious contamination of the image. Out-of-time events occur because the read-out period for the CCDs can be up to $\sim6.3$% of the frame time. Since events that occur during the read-out period can't be distinguished from others events, they are included in the event files but have invalid locations. For observations with bright sources, this can cause bright stripes in the image along the CCD read-out direction. For a more detailed description of this issue, check: http://wave.xray.mpe.mpg.de/xmm/cookbook/EPIC_PN/ootevents.html

It is strongly recommended that you keep all reprocessed data in its own directory! Hera places output files in whichever directory it is in when a task is called. Throughout this primer, it is assumed that the Pipleline Processed data in the PPS directory, the ODF data (with upper case file names, and uncompressed) are in the directory ODF, and the analysis is taking place in the PROC directory.

At this point, it is assumed that you have downloaded the data from the HEASARC archive onto a Hera server, standard or anonymous Hera is running (see §4.2), and you have prepared the data for processing (see §6). Throughout this chapter, as in §6, we will use the Lockman Hole dataset with ObsID 0147511601, though any dataset will suffice.



Subsections
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Lynne Valencic 2011-07-26