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Status of PROS Software: August 1993

--by M. Conroy, D.E. Harris, and F.R. Harnden, Jr.

PROS general release v.2.2 (May 1993) for SUN systems was followed by patch 2.2.1 (July 1993) to support many non-Sun systems (namely, RS6000, SGI, Ultrix, and VMS). The patch coincided with the completion of the upgrade of all IRAF platforms to IRAF 2.10. PROS now should run on any platform that supports IRAF 2.10. Anyone wishing to run PROS on an IRAF platform not included in the above list may contact us to discuss using their local hardware to do a port.

PROS 2.2 also included several new utilities to allow users to combine component (QPOE) data files. Because errors in ROSAT attitude solutions can result in absolute-position offsets of up to 15", SASS (the standard ROSAT processing system) does NOT automatically combine observation segments from separate "viewing seasons" (i.e., those separated more than two months). The PROS utilities QPSHIFT, QPROTATE, and QPAPPEND allow users to align and combine such component data sets manually.

PROS patch 2.2.2 (November 1993) provides support for Rationalized Data Formats (RDF) for ROSAT data, a primary focus in the last few months. The finalized formats, which have been adopted by both MPE and GSFC, are used for the output of the SASS processing pipeline. Two important features of the new formats are as follows: 1) support for the complete unscreened photon event lists, and 2) common formats for all ROSAT data (regardless of whether processed in the U.S. or in Germany). PROS also provides full support for all archived ROSAT data. The task RARC2PROS will convert any archival data into PROS format, automatically performing the necessary format conversions for the earlier MPE data.

We currently are working on expanded PROS support for additional data filtering capabilities. These capabilities are especially important when working with an unscreened photon event list that is available with the RDF formats. In addition, we are investigating means of generating "filtered" exposure maps from the energy-dependent PSPC instrument maps supplied by MPE.

User Support and Documentation

  • PROS releases and documents are maintained on the SAO anonymous ftp accounton the node sao-ftp.harvard.edu in the directory /pub/pros. (This node is also accessible as head cfa.harvard.edu.)

  • The PROS Users' Guide (PUG) is revised and distributed periodically (most recent version: July 1993) and is available on sao-ftp in directory /pub/pros/PUG. In this same directory are the following files:

    • TASKLIST.asc - an alphabetically ordered, one-page-per-task description of each PROS task.
    • INDEXES.asc - a cross index of PROS, STSDAS, and IRAF tasks.

  • The SAO "Hints&Pointers" e-mail service provides users with timely information on common problems or bugs. (Subscribe by e-mailing to the address below.) Previous "issues" are maintained on sao-ftp in /pub/pros/Hints.

  • The SAO e-mail hotline service (address below) is provided by the SAO RSDC team to give users rapid response to PROS problems.

Internet - rsdc@cfa.harvard.edu
RSDC MS-3 DECnet - CFA::RSDC (6699::RSDC)
USA BITNET - rsdc@cfa...!harvard!cfa!rsdc

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