Suzaku News #072: New XIS contamination model/Pileup tools/Suzaku Conference Reminder

[Newsletter for users of the Suzaku mission <suzakunews@lists.nasa.gov>]

13-June-2011

----------------------------------

[1] New XIS contamination model
[2] FTOOLS versions of the pileup tools
[3] Suzaku Conference reminder

----------------------------------

[1] New XIS contamination model

The XIS team has released a new contamination model.  It is available
in Suzaku FTOOLS version 18 (a component of HEAsoft v6.11, released
2011 June 9) and XIS CALDB update 20110608 (released 2011 June 9).
Specifically, the updated model is used by the tools "xissimarfgen" and
"xiscontamicalc", when one of the latest contamination calibration files
("ae_xiN_contami_20091201.fits", where N=0,1,2,3) is read in, which
is the default in the latest CALDB release.

In the older model, a fixed composition (C/O=6) was assumed for the
contaminant .  However, calibration observations of E0102-72.3 and
RX J1856.5-3754 have revealed an increasing level of inconsistency
between the Suzaku data and the known spectral parameters of these
objects, when this assumption was kept.  The team has obtained a much
better agreement with the new model, in which the contaminant composition
was allowed to evolve throughout the mission.

Please note that the new contamination model requires both the new
version of the software and the new calibration files.  Using the
new tools with older calibration files will continue to produce
results based on the old contamination model.  Attempts to use the
old tools with the latest calibration files will not work with error
messages such as

xis_contami: reading
'/FTP/caldb/data/suzaku/xis/bcf/ae_xi0_contami_20091201.fits' ...
xis_contami: FORMAT_VERSION(2) not supported

----------------------------------

[2] FTOOLS versions of the pileup tools

HEAsoft v6.11 also includes new tools, "aeattcor2" and "pileest".
These are the FTOOLS implementation of the ISIS modules for attitude
fine-tuning and pile-up estimation for bright sources that were
developed by the MIT group.  For further details of the algorithms,
please see:
http://space.mit.edu/ASC/software/suzaku/

----------------------------------

[3] Suzaku Conference reminder

If you are planning to attend the Suzaku science meeting at SLAC
(July 20-22), please register and and make your hotel reservations
soon.  The number of people who have completed the registration is
still low compared to the expected attendance, according to our
partners at Conference Connection, the company which is handling the
logistics of this conference.  You can register through the conference
web site:
http://www.confcon.com/suzaku2011/