TASK DESCRIPTIONS

Appendix A provides detailed information on how to run the individual tasks of the XMM-ESAS package. prefix is used to indicate a general identifier of output files. It is the unique exposure identifier for the data set, e.g., 1S001 or 2U002 for the MOS instruments, where it is preceded in file names by the letters mos, e.g., mos1S001 or mos2U002. For the pn the prefix is of the form, e.g., S003 or U003 preceded by the letters pn, e.g., pnS003 or pnU003.

Since the ESAS tasks are now part of SAS, SAS must be initialized, with $SAS_ODF and $SAS_CCF pointing to the appropriate locations. The ODF data must be on disk and unzipped and the current location should be the working directory.

What follows is an alphabetical list of the tasks that will be described in the remainder of this appendix. If a bug is found in the original version, please let the authors know about it. Be aware that the FORTRAN routines can't be updated without recompiling, which is beyond the scope of what most users will want to do.

• binadapt

  binadapt bins/adaptively smooths individual exposures or exposures from single observation combined by the task combimage into count rate and count rate uncertainty images.

• binadaptmerge

  binadaptmerge bins/adaptively smooths mosaicked images combined by the task mosaicmerge into count rate and count rate uncertainty images.

• cheese

  cheese does source detection and creates “cheese” masks for point-source masking during image processing. cheese allows the user to set a flux threshold over the field for the removal of the source contributions to the spectra as well as the images.

• combimage

  combimage combines co-aligned event, exposure, QPB, SPF, and SWCX background images from different exposures and different instruments from the same ObsID.

• convregion

  convregion converts region information in celestial coordinates into region information in detector coordinates. It will do so for region fits files, ascii lists, or individual regions.

• emanom

  emanom reads an event file for a MOS detector and determines whether any of the CCDs are in anamolous states.

• emlfill

  emlfill corrects an emllist.fits file for sources whose mean flux is marked as NULL by recalculating that flux from just those observations where the source was detected.

• emlmerge

  emlmerge merges a number of emllist.fits files from different observations to create a single list with no duplicate sources. May not yet be fully implemented.

• espfilt

  espfilt filters and cleans event files of soft proton flare contamination. Produces both a cleaned event file and a number of diagnostics.

• makemaskmerge

  makemaskmerge creates a “cheese” mask from a merged source list created by emlmerge. May not yet be fully implemented.

• mosaicmerge

  mosaicmerge creates mosaicked count, exposure, QPB, SPF, and SWCX background images for multiple observations and exposures.

• mosback

  mosback takes the output of the routine mosspectra and creates QPB spectra and images in detector coordinates, as selected, for EPIC MOS data.

• mosspectra

  mosspectra processes the filtered event files from the task espfilt to produce a set of intermediate files for the production of QPB background spectra and images. mosspectra also produces source spectra and the appropriate Redistribution Matrix Files, RMFs, and Ancillary Region Files, ARFs, for spectral analysis.

• pnback

  pnback takes the output of pnspectra and creates QPB spectra and images in detector coordinates, as selected, for EPIC pn data.

• pnspectra

  pnspectra provides the same functions for pn data as mosspectra provides for the MOS. However, it also creates spectra and images from the out-of-time processing.

• pointsrc

  pointsrc calculates the appropriate Xspec normalization for the extragalactic background given the user-selected point-source exclusion threshold.

• proton

  proton produces images in detector coordinates of the model residual SP contamination. To do so, it uses the fitted values of the SP component from Xspec and standard detector maps.

• protonscale

  protonscale extracts the appropriate scale factors for the solid angle and relative SP contributions to include in spectral fitting.

• rotdet2sky

  rotdet2sky does the rotation of the QPB images output from mosback and pnback, the SP images output from proton, and the SWCX output from swcx which are in detector coordinates, into images in sky coordinates.

• sppartial

  sppartial scales the SP spectral fit results from a limited region of the detector to the full field of view. This allows the user to fit for the SP contamination in regions of lower surface brightness (e.g., an outer annulus for a cluster of galaxies) which can significantly improve the accuracy of the fit.

• swcx

  swcx produces images in detector coordinates of the model residual SWCX contamination. To do so, it uses the fitted values of the SWCX component from Xspec and standard detector maps.