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BeppoSAX e-mail news n. 5 


                                                   05 December 1997
Dear BeppoSAX user,

this is the fifth BeppoSAX "e-mail news" message and covers the
following topics:

	1. Release of SAXDAS 1.3.0  software
        2. Release of XAS 2.1 software
	3. Release of WFC 104 (stage I) and 107 (Stage II) software
	4. Release of new improved calibrations



1. Release of SAXDAS 1.3.0  software
- ----------------------------------

The software now works with FTOOLS versions 3.5, 3.6 and 4.0.

Please note the the  ftools4.0 August 1997 release needs the following
routines to be updated:
-----------------------------------------
 NAME         LOCATION UNDER FTOOLS TREE
------------------------------------------
 pquery.c      xanlib/xpi/
 extevh.f      xselect/extractor/extevh.f
 extractor.f   xselect/extractor/extractor.f

Updates can be found under
ftp://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/software/ftools/release/other/pquery.c
ftp://lheaftp.gsfc.nasa.gov/pub/kaa/ftools/extevh.f
ftp://lheaftp.gsfc.nasa.gov/pub/kaa/ftools/extractor.f

The new distribution of SAXDAS software consists of:

SAXDAS_1.3.0.tar.gz             SAXDAS software, release 28 Nov. 1997
SAXLEcaldb_1.5.0.tar.gz         SAXDAS LECS cal. files for data reduction
SAXMEcaldb_1.4.0.tar.gz         SAXDAS MECS cal. files for data reduction
SAXPDcaldb_1.2.0.tar.gz         SAXDAS PDS cal. files for data reduction
saxdas_install.ps               how to install SAXDAS
xselect_saxpatch_ftools3.6.tar.gz       SAX patch to xselect 1.3 (ftools3.6)
xselect_saxpatch_ftools4.0.tar.gz       SAX patch to xselect 1.3 (ftools4.0)


What's new
----------

a) SAXDAS now supports PDS data reduction (direct modes 1, 2 and 6).
   PDS data reduction is very similar to LECS and MECS data reduction,
   using the same script (SAXPIPE). Data are translated to fits format,
   observations are concatenated, housekeeping are translated in
   physical units, events from the 4 PDS units are equalized and
   screened for fixed RiseTime thresholds. Finally, data are screened
   for Earth occultation and periods of high particle background and/or
   instable gain (the first few minutes after the passage in the
   South Atlantic Anomaly).

   We also provide a script (PDPRODUCTS) to extract from equalized
   and screened event files, background subtracted spectra and light curves.
   PDPRODUCTS produces coadded background subtracted spectra from the
   4 PDS units and merged lightcurves in user defined PI bands.
   Please note that the spectra always contains counts accumulated from
   all 4 PDS units (and then most of the time accumulated typically for
   40 % of the on target MECS exposure time, because of the collimators
   rocking mode usually adopted). On the other hand, light curves
   count rates usually refer to the events accumulated in 2 PDS units
   (in the standard collimator rocking mode 2 units are
   always on source while the other 2 units monitor the background).
   Therefore usually count rates in spectra are twice the count rates
   in the light curves.

   Full documentation on the PDS specific programs, scripts and pipelines
   is in preparation. We hope to put on line this documentation on our
   WEB site (www.sdc.asi.it/software) as soon as possible.

b) New improved Burst-Length selection is now used in LECS data reduction.
   This, together with the new released response matrix, strongly reduces
   the strength of instrumental systematic features in the LECS spectra
   below 0.5 keV.

c) A new calibration of the telescope misallignement with respect to the
   satellite z axis is now used in MECS data reduction.

d) several minor bugs have been corrected.



2. Release of XAS 2.1 software
- ------------------------------

What's new
----------

a) improved gain calibration for the calculation of MECS response matrix.

b) improved gain calibration and algorithms to calculate PDS response
   matrix.

c) fix of several small bugs.


3. Release of WFC 104 (stage I) and 107 (Stage II) software
- ---------------------------------------------------------

The new distribution of the wide field camera (WFC) software consists of:

wfc_full-104.107.tar.gz,
   containing
   a. the software for Stage I (version 104)
      and Stage II (version 107) data processing,
   b. documentation files

What's new
----------
a) The software now works with both FTOOLS version 3.6
   and version 4.0.

b) The stageI program w_proc now has a switch -w1 or -w2
   to process files for only 1 of the wide field camera's.

c) The program "cerr" (catalog error) has been added to stageII
   "cerr" computes the distance between the
   observed and the catalog position for a source.
   It acts on an output .res file from the program iros.
   This program requires the library SLALIB,
   which is called for in the Makefile.

For further details, see the Release notes included in the distribution.


4. Release of new improved calibrations
- -------------------------------------

The September 1997 calibration release consist of new LECS, MECS,
PDS and HPGSPC response matrices.

A syntetic comparison between the results obtained on Crab spectra using the
January 1997 and the September 1997 response matrices can be found at:

http://www.sdc.asi.it/software/cookbook/cross_cal.html

More in detail, the main changes with respect to the January 1997 release
are:

a) LECS: 1) a better evaluation of the instrument resolution below 0.3 keV;
   2) a new improved Burst-Lenght selection to discriminate source events from
   background events. This strongly reduces the strength of instrumental
   systematic features in the LECS spectra below 0.5 keV. 3) A better
   treatement of the penetration effect. Nevertheless, LECS data above
   4-5 keV should still be used with care.

b) MECS: a new improved calibration of the Energy-PI curve, which cures
   small systematic errors (about 50 eV) in the evaluation of the energy
   of line features above the Xe edges (E> 4.78 keV).

c) PDS: extension of the useful range down to 13-15 keV; improved equalization;
   treatment of the Compton interactions, which implies the addition of
   non-diagonal elements in the response matrix.

d) HPGSPC: Improved calibration of the Energy-PI curve.

We provide in our anonymous ftp site (www.sdc.asi.it) and its
mirror at HEASARC (heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov) the new LECS and MECS
resolution matrices (.rmf files), new LECS and MECS effective areas
(.arf files) for a number of extraction radii and a number of
raw detectoror positions (LECS only), new HPGSPC resolution matrix
and effective area, new PDS response matrices (including both resolution
matrix and effective area) for a 128 and 256 linearly rebinned
channel spectrum and a 60 logarithmically rebinned channel spectrum.



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

SAXDAS, XAS and WFC software packages, the September 1997 issue of
response matrices and the May 1997 and September 1997 issue of
background files are available from our anonymous ftp service:

 ftp www.sdc.asi.it
 Name : anonymous
 cd /pub/sax/software/
 dir
      512 Aug 13 12:27 .
      512 Dec 23  1996 ..
   458646 Aug  7  1996 auxdata.tar.gz
     1024 Mar 27  1997 develop
   370680 Apr  9  1997 nhtar.tar.gz
      512 Aug 11 18:02 pimms
      512 Aug 13 12:19 rxcc
     1024 Dec  1 16:52 saxdas
      512 Aug 12 15:41 scripts
   635213 Sep 12  1996 viewing.tar.Z
      512 Nov 24 11:35 wfc
      512 Aug 28 14:53 xas
  1836637 Jun 11 15:24 ximage.tar.gz
  2842624 Jun 11 15:24 ximage_osf

 cd saxdas
 dir
      639 Nov 28 19:40 README
  1832480 Dec  4 16:47 SAXDAS_1.3.0.tar.gz
   139402 Nov 28 17:17 SAXLEcaldb_1.5.0.tar.gz
   182065 Nov 27 18:22 SAXMEcaldb_1.4.0.tar.gz
     6431 Nov 27 18:20 SAXPDcaldb_1.2.0.tar.gz
  1574838 Aug  2  1996 gcc-2.7.0-2.7.1.diff
  7029728 Aug  2  1996 gcc-2.7.0.tar.gz
    73225 Aug  2  1996 gcc-2.7.1-2.7.2.diff
      512 Nov 28 16:28 old
    71555 Aug  2  1996 patch-2.1.tar.gz
    17099 Nov 28 19:37 saxdas_install.ps
   107211 Dec  1 16:51 xselect_saxpatch_ftools3.6.tar.gz
   104545 Dec  1 16:51 xselect_saxpatch_ftools4.0.tar.gz

 cd xas
 dir
      225 Feb 19  1997 CHANGES_2.0.2
      319 Jun 27 16:45 CHANGES_2.0.3
      349 Dec  3 17:43 CHANGES_2.1
      512 Dec  4 10:48 HT
      512 Dec  3 17:36 old
  3817030 Dec  4 10:48 xas_2.1.tar.gz

 cd wfc
 dir
      512 Nov 24 11:33 old_dist_101_104
  1534440 Nov 24 11:34 wfc_full-104.107.tar.gz
     3592 Nov 24 11:36 wfc_release_notes_104_107


 cd pub/sax/cal
 dir
     512 Sep 15 14:16 bgd
     512 Oct 28 10:57 caldb
     512 Oct 30 16:09 crab
     512 Sep  1 13:15 responses

 cd bgd
 dir
    1024 Sep 15 14:12 97_1
    1024 Oct 10 08:24 97_5
     512 Sep 15 14:16 97_9
     512 Dec 19  1996 pre-flight_estimates

 cd crab
 dir
   14400 Oct 30 16:09 Crab_hpgspc_Sep97.pha
  103680 Oct 30 16:08 Crab_lecs_8_Sep97.pha
  109440 Oct 30 16:08 Crab_mecs1_8_Sep97.pha
  132480 Oct 30 16:08 Crab_mecs2_8_Sep97.pha
  138240 Oct 30 16:08 Crab_mecs3_8_Sep97.pha
  158400 Oct 30 16:08 Crab_mecs_8_Sep97.pha
   14400 Oct 30 16:08 Crab_pds_Sep97.pha

 cd responses
 dir
    1024 Dec 23  1996 96_12
     512 Dec 19  1996 96_5
     512 Dec 19  1996 96_9
    1024 May 30  1997 97_1
    1536 Sep  1 13:17 97_9
     512 May  2  1997 grouping

 cd responses/97_9
 dir

   23040 Sep  1 13:16 hpgspc_sep97.arf
 1022400 Sep  1 13:16 hpgspc_sep97.rmf
   20160 Sep  1 13:16 lecs_130_124_8_sep97.arf
   20160 Sep  1 13:16 lecs_130_126_8_sep97.arf
   20160 Sep  1 13:16 lecs_130_128_8_sep97.arf
 1961280 Sep  1 13:16 lecs_sep97.rmf
   23040 Sep  1 13:16 mecs1_2_sep97.arf
   23040 Sep  1 13:16 mecs1_3_sep97.arf
   23040 Sep  1 13:16 mecs1_4_sep97.arf
   23040 Sep  1 13:16 mecs1_6_sep97.arf
   23040 Sep  1 13:16 mecs1_8_sep97.arf
 1221120 Sep  1 13:16 mecs1_sep97.rmf
   23040 Sep  1 13:16 mecs23_2_sep97.arf
   23040 Sep  1 13:16 mecs23_3_sep97.arf
   23040 Sep  1 13:16 mecs23_4_sep97.arf
   23040 Sep  1 13:16 mecs23_6_sep97.arf
   23040 Sep  1 13:16 mecs23_8_sep97.arf
   23040 Sep  1 13:16 mecs2_2_sep97.arf
   23040 Sep  1 13:16 mecs2_3_sep97.arf
   23040 Sep  1 13:16 mecs2_4_sep97.arf
   23040 Sep  1 13:16 mecs2_6_sep97.arf
   23040 Sep  1 13:16 mecs2_8_sep97.arf
 1221120 Sep  1 13:16 mecs2_sep97.rmf
   23040 Sep  1 13:16 mecs3_2_sep97.arf
   23040 Sep  1 13:16 mecs3_3_sep97.arf
   23040 Sep  1 13:16 mecs3_4_sep97.arf
   23040 Sep  1 13:16 mecs3_6_sep97.arf
   23040 Sep  1 13:16 mecs3_8_sep97.arf
 1221120 Sep  1 13:16 mecs3_sep97.rmf
   23040 Sep  1 13:16 mecs_2_sep97.arf
   23040 Sep  1 13:16 mecs_3_sep97.arf
   23040 Sep  1 13:16 mecs_4_sep97.arf
   23040 Sep  1 13:16 mecs_6_sep97.arf
   23040 Sep  1 13:16 mecs_8_sep97.arf
  515520 Sep  1 13:17 pds_128_aug97.rmf
 1005120 Sep  1 13:17 pds_256_aug97.rmf
  256320 Sep  1 13:17 pds_60_aug97.rmf


The same files are also available from the HEASARC mirror:

ftp://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/sax
---------------------------------------------------------------------------


------------------BeppoSAX SDC useful addresses and numbers----------------

WWW home page     http://www.sdc.asi.it/
anonymous ftp     www.sdc.asi.it
phone             +39 6 40796307 (M.E. Pennisi, SDC secretary)
fax               +39 6 40793855, +39 6 40796291
e-mail            helpdesk@sax.sdc.asi.it
p-mail address    BeppoSAX Science Data Center
                  ASI
                  c/o Nuova Telespazio
                  via Corcolle 19
                  00131 Roma
                  Italy
how to reach us   http://www.sdc.asi.it/howreach.html

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