Background Working Group Meeting Madrid, March 22 nd 2010 SOC Activities Ignacio de la Calle

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I. de la Calle - SRE-OAX

Background Working Group Meeting

Madrid, March 22nd 2010

SOC Activities SOC Activities

Ignacio de la Calle

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The EPIC Background Working GroupThe EPIC Background Working Group

MotivationThe EPIC Background working group was founded in 2005 to

provide users with clear information on the EPIC Background and (SAS)-Tools to treat the EPIC Background correctly for various scenarios.

Members (is this list updated ?) LUX: Andy Read (chair), Jenny CarterGSFC GOF: Steve Snowden, Kip KuntzMPE: Wolfgang Pietsch, Michael FreybergINAF: Silvano Molendi, Alberto LeccardiESA: Ignacio de la Calle (co-ord.), Matthias Ehle,

Carlos GabrielCEA: Hubert ChenIAAT: Christoph TenzerGuests: Uli Briel, Steve Sembay, …

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Outcome of the Latest Users Group Meeting

The latest Users Group (UG) meeting took place at ESAC on the 6th-7th of May 2009, were I. de la Calle gave a status report of the BGWG activities on behalf of the group (minutes: http://xmm.esac.esa.int/external/xmm_user_support/usersgroup/index.shtml)

The chairman of the group (M. Arnaud) acknowledge the work done by the group so far and encourages the group to carry on with their activities.

Two very general worries were raised during the meeting:

1. Support from the BGWG in the medium term future1. Integration of ESAS into SAS2. Automatic generation of Blank Sky Files

2. The need to compare the different background analysis methods1. FWC data + background modeling (ESAS) vs. Blank Sky Files2. Other methods ?3. How to treat the background in Small Window Observations

Next UG Meeting: 12th-13th of May 2010 at ESAC

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Outcome of the Latest Users Group Meeting

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I. Blank Sky Background Event Files

II. Filter Wheel Close Data (FWC)

III. XMM-Newton Extended Source Analysis Software (XMM-ESAS)

IV. Background treatment Scripts

Repository of FWC Data provided by K. Kuntz (EPIC-MOS) and M. Freyberg (EPIC-pn)

Developed by S.Sembay at the NASA/GSFC XMM-Newton Guest Observer Facility (GOF) in cooperation with the XMM-Newton SOC and the Background Working Group.

Collection of analysis Scripts developed by several teams as part of PhD Theses, Trainee Projects, Research work ......

Developed and maintain at LUX by the EPIC Blank Sky team based on the work of J. Carter and A. Read (A&A 464, p1155, 2007)

Activities of the BGWG

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Products of the BGWG: I. Blank Sky FilesProducts of the BGWG: I. Blank Sky Files

SAS ThreadsThere are plans to incorporate another thread to deal with Blank Sky

Files (to be released by the 18th of June, before the 10th SAS Workshop) :

How to use MOS background blank field files (exist)How to use pn background blank field files (by I. de la

Calle) (Or merge both in one as suggested by J. Carter).

Changes to Blank Sky Web Pages at the SOCJ. Carter suggested some changes which will be implemented

Small Window Blank Sky filesAny updates ?The recommendation to the users is to make use of FWC data. Is this still the preferred approach ? Where is this mentioned ?

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Products of the BGWG: I. Blank Sky FilesProducts of the BGWG: I. Blank Sky Files

Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar 2009

News #84

Performance

• Total number of requests up to the end of Apr 09: 82 (28 users)

• If request is too generic, the user is asked to resubmit.

• Responding to user requests on average within a 3 day period.

Future of Blank Sky Files• Adding more data

• Create Blank Sky Files from SAS v9.0 event files

• Short-term plan (<2 years): keep semi-automatic approach unless demand rises above current levels.

• Long-term plan (>2+ years): port the system to a fully automatic system.

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Products of the BGWG: II. FWCProducts of the BGWG: II. FWCFilter wheel closed (FWC) data

o Data gathered from calibration observations with filter wheel in closed position

o Released in September 2006: stacked collections of FWC data available for MOS and pn

o Dedicated EPIC FWC calibration observation:

• NRCO#70 in 2007• Rout. Cal. 10 ksec /month • New approach implemented in the Routine Calibration Plan as of summer 2009

o 2 x 10 ksec RCO; CLOSED FF (10 ksec/semester)o Should there be evidence of response inhomogeneities, this can be increased via

NRCOso Additionally, during all the slews in every 4th revolution, the MOS cameras can be

set to CLOSED FF (pn slews are used for science)

o Updates to Repository• To solve some user reported issues regarding 'corrupted' X/Y coordinates, the

observations have been recast to point at a fixed point in the sky (RA=DEC=PA=0). These new files have replaced the older files in the BGWG web pages (Feb 2009)

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Products of the BGWG: II. FWCProducts of the BGWG: II. FWC

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Work has been started on EPIC-pn FWC Full Frame (FF)

• Search the archive for EPIC FWC observations in FF• 11 new observations found (2007-2010)

• Run SAS tasks cifbuild, odfingest, epproc and emproc produce event_list

• Filter event_list following same procedure as files currently in the repository

• Filter expresion as taken from headers:• pn PI > 150

• MOS PATTERN<=12 && FLAG&0x766a0f63==0

• Merge event_list (ra=dec=0)

• The whole procedure was made automatic (perl script)• No attcalc or evigweight tasks used

CURRENTLY ON REPOSITORY

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Rev Obs ID Time[s] Obs_Start (UTC)

1355_0413580201_EPN_S008_ImagingEvts.ds 13873 2007-05-04T21:07:291393_0412580201_EPN_S003_ImagingEvts.ds 56973 2007-07-19T04:00:321430_0511010401_EPN_S003_ImagingEvts.ds 12917 2007-09-30T10:49:401449_0502041701_EPN_S003_ImagingEvts.ds 11917 2007-11-07T08:09:561468_0504102401_EPN_S004_ImagingEvts.ds 11949 2007-12-15T22:00:381500_0511011001_EPN_S003_ImagingEvts.ds 13921 2008-02-17T05:28:141512_0505480701_EPN_S002_ImagingEvts.ds 13918 2008-03-11T19:40:521561_0556214401_EPN_S003_ImagingEvts.ds 3125 2008-06-18T20:21:321569_0553912001_EPN_S003_ImagingEvts.ds 11913 2008-07-03T15:42:181587_0556214601_EPN_S003_ImagingEvts.ds 11922 2008-08-08T21:40:381844_0604890201_EPN_S003_ImagingEvts.ds 11918 2010-01-03T17:59:25

TOTAL 174346 secs (Current Repository: 346412 secs)

Merged File Size: 1.1 Gb(Current Repository File Size: 850 Mb)

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Flag=0 && pattern <=4 Flag=0 && pattern <=4

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Update of Web Pages

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Products of the BGWG: III. ESASProducts of the BGWG: III. ESAS

XMM-Newton Extended Source Analysis Software Package (ESAS)o Released in March 2006 for EPIC MOS detectors.

• Create model quiescent particle background spectra for user defined regions within the FOV of the detectors.

• Create bkg subtracted & exposure corrected images.o Based on software described in Snowden, Collier & Kuntz (2004, ApJ 610,

1182) and updated & applied to a catalog of cluster observations in Snowden, Mushotzky, Kuntz, Davis (2008, A&A 478, 615).

PERL scripts (calling SAS tasks) & stand-alone Fortran 77 programs + FITS Calibration files

o Version 2 released, 31 May 2007.o “If problems arise or results look odd, please contact the XMM-Newton

Helpdesk”. Suggestions for improving the software or documentation welcome.

Documentation o Cookbook: incl. example data & recipe of spectral & image data processing

Principal Ideas presented in UG meeting in 2007 and 2008

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Products of the BGWG: III. ESASProducts of the BGWG: III. ESAS

What is new ?

o In order to improve the maintenance of ESAS, and to make the life of the users easier, the code has been integrated (A. Ibarra, SOC) in SAS and released as part of SAS v9.0 in June 2009.

o The ESAS code will be maintained by S. Snowden (XMM-Newton Guest Observer Facility, NASA/GSFC).

• There will no longer be a stand-alone version of ESAS.

o The inclusion of EPIC-pn analysis in ESAS is currently on-going but not likely to happen for the release of SAS v.10.0

o The SAS v.9.0 release of the MOS and mosaicing ESAS tasks include upgrades and improvements.

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Products of the BGWG: III.ESASProducts of the BGWG: III.ESAS

Future plans for ESAS

o Completing the EPIC-pn component of the ESAS software in SAS, including its evaluation.

o An updated ESAS Cookbook to reflect the inclusion of ESAS in SAS (just received, 18th of March, v.4 of ESAS Cookbook).

o Development of analysis scripts to tie ESAS and SAS which simplify tasks such as image creation and mosaicing, ….

o Development of SAS analysis threads (SOC).

o Trainee student will start this year to work on the comparison of the application of different background treatment methods (using SNR)

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Products of the BGWG: IV. ScriptsProducts of the BGWG: IV. Scripts

• Estimation of the residual Soft Proton Flare contamination (Developed by Silvano Molendi, Andrea De Luca & Alberto Leccardi (2004, A&A 419, 837), and coded by A. Read, for EPIC event files, to estimate the amount of

residual Soft Proton flare contamination)

• The 'images' script: a tool to create attractive XMM-Newton Images (Developed at the XMM-Newton SOC as part of a trainee project to create attractive multi-energy band images using and merging data from the three EPIC cameras)

• NEW: Background correction for faint extended EPIC-pn emission (Method developed by M. Bauer (MPE) to use a local estimate of the sky background to correct for faint extended emission in EPIC-PN data; Bauer, M. et al 2007, astro-ph/0711.3182)

New MethodStandard Method

The group holds a repository of scripts for background treatment.

• SOC support is given on a best-effort basis• The aim is to incorporate useful/validated scripts as SAS tasks

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SummarySummaryBlank Sky Files

Update/create SAS threads (MOS; pn ; both)Update some information at SOC Web PagesRecommendation for Small Window observations

Filter Wheel Close ObservationsAs of Jan 2010, the SOC takes over the responsibility for updating the FWC repositoryUpdate of repository has started with pn FF and other modes and MOS will follow once

an approach for the update is agreed on

XMM-ESASPart of SAS as of v.9.0 (only MOS analysis available; pn on the way)Stand alone version of the Cookbook (v.4 2010), will merge with SAS Manual when full XMM-ESAS version is ready within SAS (not likely to happen for v.10.0)

Trainee in 2010 to start working in comparison of background treatment methods

ScriptsNothing done so farAny plans for the maintenance of the scripts or future plans ? Should they be part of SAS ?

Background Working Group Meeting Madrid, March 22 nd 2010 SOC Activities Ignacio de la Calle

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Transcript of Background Working Group Meeting Madrid, March 22 nd 2010 SOC Activities Ignacio de la Calle