GSFC XMM-Newton GOF Status Report #075: XMM-NEWTON NEWS #33

[GSFC XMM-Newton GOF <xmmhelp@olegacy.gsfc.nasa.gov>]

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_/                 XMM-NEWTON NEWS #33   ---    09-May-2003                 _/
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                ESA, XMM-Newton Science Operations Centre at
            Villafranca del Castillo, Satellite Tracking Station
                P.O. Box - Apdo. 50727, 28080 Madrid, Spain

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SOC Home Page:           
        http://xmm.vilspa.esa.es/
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Contents:   
          - AO-3: Statistics about submitted proposals
          - XMM-Newton CD-ROM automatic delivery discontinued


AO-3: Statistics about submitted proposals
==========================================

The XMM-Newton third Announcement of Opportunity (AO-3) was closed on
30-April-2003.

The performance of the new Proposal Submission System was excellent.
Reports about a non nominal behaviour, like missing confirmation e-mails
or difficulties with the up-load of the justification file, were
extremely rare. 

In total 694 valid proposals were successfully submitted requesting
in total 98833 ksec of science time. SOC received proposals from 468 
different Principal Investigators from 24 countries, mostly ESA member 
states, the United States and Japan. The number of countries increases 
to 36 if Co-Investigators are taken into account as well.
Considering  Principal Investigators and Co-Investigators, about
1500 individual scientists responded to the third Announcement of
Opportunity.

The mean time requested for the individual observations is 33 ksec,
which is an increase of about 10% in comparison to the previous call.
This trend was already visible comparing AO-1 with AO-2.
The most probable reason is that the scientific community optimizes the
scientific usage of XMM-Newton taking advantage of its specific strengths,
i.e. simultaneous non-dispersive spectroscopic imaging, medium 
resolution dispersive spectroscopy and optical/UV imaging with the 
unprecedented effective area of the X-ray instruments.

As a result of the wish to have the date of release for future AO's 
in autumn, the third Announcement of Opportunity covers a period of 
about 1.5 years and therefore about 60% more observing time is available 
for distribution. Consequently, the nominal oversubscription factor of 5.1 
can not directly be compared with the one reached for the previous calls.
Normalizing to a standard one year AO the oversubscription factor is 7.6.


XMM-Newton CD-ROM automatic delivery discontinued
==================================================

The automatic delivery of CD-ROMs to the principal investigator (PI) of 
an XMM-Newton observation will be discontinued as of June 15, 2003.

Observation Data Files, as well as Pipeline Products (PPS), as derived 
from the ODF by the Survey Science Centre (SSC), should be selected 
instead from the XMM-Newton Science Archive (XSA) and extracted via
ftp. Users are informed that the XSA also allows the generation of
CD-ROMs if requested. 

The PI will continue to receive via e-mail a "Delivery Note" as soon
as ODF and PPS of one of their observations are available in the XSA. 


Yours sincerely,
XMM-Newton SOC
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