XMM-Newton Science Analysis System: User Guide

2.5 Selecting a SAS task

To get a list of all the SAS tasks, start the main SAS GUI by typing the command sas on the command line. A particular SAS task GUI can simply be invoked by double-clicking on its name on the provided list. The use of the SAS GUI is explained in § 3. The SAS tasks can be grouped by:

• General utility tasks, which use both raw event files and calibrated event files
• Calibration tasks, which, for example, interact with the current calibration files
• Pipeline processing tasks
• EPIC specific tasks
• RGS specific tasks
• OM specific tasks

A list of packages in alphabetical order or classified by group is available at:

http://xmm-tools.cosmos.esa.int/external/sas/current/doc/

For detailed descriptions of individual tasks, the user is referred to the SAS package descriptions which can be accessed at the above address or via the SAS GUI help button. As a starting point, the user can read the package documentation of the list of frequently used tasks provided in Table 1.

Table 1: Some frequently used SAS tasks.

Task name	Task description
arfgen	Generates an EPIC ancillary response file
calview	An interactive viewer of the XMM-Newton calibration database
cifbuild	Creates a Calibration Index File for a given observation date
edetect_chain	EPIC source detection metatask
emproc	Fully configurable "pipeline" processing of EPIC MOS observation data files (ODFs)
epproc	Fully configurable "pipeline" processing of EPIC PN ODFs
evselect	Filters event lists and extracts images, spectra, time series and histograms
odfbrowser	Interactive graphical viewer of an XMM-Newton observation
odfingest	Prepares an ODF for processing
omichain	Fully configurable "pipeline" processing of the OM imaging mode ODFs
omfchain	Fully configurable "pipeline" processing of the OM fast mode ODFs
omgchain	Fully configurable "pipeline" processing of the OM grism mode ODFs
rgsproc	Fully configurable "pipeline" processing of the RGS part of an observation
rgsrmfgen	Constructs an RGS response matrix file
rmfgen	Generates an EPIC response file
sas	Launch the SAS graphical user interface
srcdisplay	Display image overlayed with positions of detected sources
xmmselect	Interactive filtering and extraction of images, spectra, time series and histograms