Minutes of the 2nd XMM Users' Group Meeting Date: June 5, 2001 Location: 198th AAS meeting, Pasadena, CA Attending: Richard Griffith (Chair) Smitar Mathur (GO, telecon) Wilt Saunders (GO) Pat Slane (GO, telecon) Fred Walter (GO, telecon) Fred Jansen (Project Director, telecon) Masao Sako for Steve Kahn (instrument team) Tim Sasseen for France Cordova (instrument team) Dan Golombek (NASA HQ) Donald Kniffen (NASA HQ) Richard Mushotzky (Project Scientist) Mike Arida (GOF) Ilana Harris (GOF) Steve Snowden (GOF) Martin Still (GOF) Absent: Anne Zabludoff (GO), Dave Saunders (GO) Agenda: 1) Response to long standing issues (i) membership of Users' Group (ii) frequency and location of meetings (iii) funding for travel to meetings (iv) US GO access to schedules/observations logs 2) Status summary of observations and data analysis (i) GOF summary of Guest Observing (ii) GTO summaries (iii) individual GO experiences 3 Long term project status and concerns (i) ESA Project Scientist summary (ii) public access to all PV/Cal data (iii) position of us go community (iv) recommendation (v) NASA HQ comments 1) response to long standing issues (i) membership of Users' Group There is a concern that there are too are disproportionate number of GTO observations being conducted relative to GOs. The Users' Group do not yet have any data experience. Only GTOs have experience with data and analysis. This imbalance will change over the next year. The issue of RG receiving software support from NASA while chairing the committee was raised, but RG assured the Group that he does not receive direct funds from NASA for this purpose. It was agreed that the two Mission Scientists (RG and RM) are currently more representative of the GO community than GTOs are, hence their presence on the committee. Committee membership will be reviewed around Jan-Mar 2002 RM, after more GO data has been distributed and the results of AO-2 have been publicized. (ii) Frequency and location of meetings It was agrees that holding future meetings at AAS conventions was not a good idea.. This convention was not well attended by GOs, presumably because of the lack of distributed data. The next AO announcement will be on Sep 3, 2001, with a deadline 6 weeks later (FJ). The AO period will be 1 year. It is suggested that the next meeting be at Goddard Space Flight Center or in Washington DC, in conjunction with the 2-year Chandra meeting in September. It is not clear that everybody on the committee will attend this Chandra meeting since a similar meeting in St Paul, MN is also pending. However, most com-mitre members reside on the east coast so travel to DC is relatively easy. Can each member of the Users Group inform RG of their willingness to attend. (iii) funding for travel to meetings NASA will fund travel to the next Users Group meeting. There is a mechanism for funding GOs already in place for other missions. (iv) US GO access to schedules/observations logs There is a concern from GOs about the lack of scheduling information. Preliminary versions of html files sent to RG and the GOF provide that information. These will be available on the VILSPA website early next week (FJ). Although the pages are only 95% complete FJ indicated that availability of information was currently more important that fidelity. A link to these pages will be made available on the GOF site. The documents contain target names, start times, RA, Dec, PA, Obs ID, exposure time durations, pi name, observation date and and date of CD production. FJ indicated that if a US mirror for these pages were desired, the format would be made easier to reproduce and update. 2) summary of status of obs + DATA analysis i) GOF summary of GO observations (SS) ~27 GO data sets have passed through the GOF. 11 of those in the in the last 2 weeks. US PI data sets are shipped on fridays from VILSPA, arriving at the GOF on monday or tuesday. These are downloaded into the HEASARC archive while emails go out to the PIs who can immediately retrieve their data from the archive using a PGP encryption key. The CDs are also sent on to the PIs via land mail. There have been very few questions from GOs concerning data analysis so far. 33% of the US data expect has so far been received. GOs are welcome to visit the GOF for data analysis, but none have so far done so. The GOF have however worked with GSFC-based GOs. SM believes few people will visit the GOF, preferring to get proficient on their home machines. However a visit to the GOF will speed up your data analysis. Two Linux boxes have been ordered by the GOF to support GO data analysis at gsfc. GOs have recently attended CIAO workshops and an XMM SAS analogy was suggested. SAS workshops will occur at the ESTEC meeting in nov 2001. 15 sparc stations will be available for attendees to sit on. (ii) GTO summaries Columbia are working on calibration. Most wavelength ranges are good to 5%. The short wavelength effective area between 5-8.5A is discrepant by 20-30%. A new scattering model should improve this. Long wavelengths > 25A also discrepant by 20%, although the cause is unknown. RM received his first data CD one week ago. EPIC ARF and RMF generation was successful using the latest SAS. This was not possible using the current public software. Accurate EPIC background calibrations will take several years. A new version will be released on Jun 18 which is satisfactory for most science needs. There is a significant improvements in the amount of data passing successfully through the SAS (FJ). 75-80% data pass through pipeline with the new SAS. Previously this was 50%. A web page will be made available at VILSPA concerning calibration accuracies and known software problems. Can GTO teams donate their data to the HEASARC archive? UCSB agree. (iii) individual GO experiences There haven't been any. 3) Long term project status and concerns i ESA project scientist summary (FJ) Data processing is currently two months behind real-time. Data are released once pipeline products ar vailable, although some products are missing in individual cases. Users are however urged to rerun the pipeline for themselves. There has been routine processing since revolution 150. All data from before that are being reprocessing currently down to rev 88 and up to rev 44. Pipeline processing will need 2-3 months to reduce the real-time delay for data products to 4 weeks. 5% of CDs need manual reprocessing providing another 4-5 week delay. (ii) public access to all PV/Cal data Next week 6-7 PV/Cal observations will be made available. All PV/Cal observations will be public by the end of july. This should allow GOs enough time to analyze data before AO-2. AO2 will start early june 2002. (iii) position of US GO community Data goes public one year after the PI's receipt of data product. GTO sources may be available earlier pending agreement from the GT teams. The ESA archive will be on-line in early spring and based on the ISO archive. HTR mode on the RGS will be available for AO-2. (iv) recommendation The next meeting should occur in sep 2001, in DC. Input is required from the Users Group for next years senior review (late spring) and this should be based on data received by GOs and public data available at that time. XMM results should also be aimed towards NASA HQ well before the senior review. (v) NASA HQ comments There is the possibility of joint XMM/Chandra observations in the next cycle. Wyler and the ESA director are pushing the concept strongly. TACs will be instructed only accept optimal proposals. However a mechanism for shuffling proposals from one TAC to another is too complex. Funding of ToOs will not be through normal AOs. There is no money currently set aside for it. It may be possible to use money set aside for C targets that won't be observed during AO-1. A policy is needed for ToO funding. Money is available for 5 or 6 ToOs at 100% funding on a yearly basis. Funding at half-level was suggested.