HEASARC News Announcement of Browse Notification Service

[heasarcnews@lists.nasa.gov]

NASA/GSFC HEASARC
05 Jun 2008

Browse Notification Service Now Available
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The HEASARC announces the release of the "Browse Notification Service".  
The Browse Notification Service allows you to keep track of the release of 
data to the HEASARC or the change in status of observations of sources of 
interest, for a variety of operating missions (currently Chandra, 
XMM-Newton, Swift, Suzaku, RXTE, INTEGRAL, and Spitzer).  You can use the 
Notification Service to be alerted when the status of an observation 
changes (from "scheduled" to "observed" for example), or you can be 
notified that new data for a source is publicly available from the archive.

The service is available at:

http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/W3Browse/notification/monitor_src.pl

After registering at this page, users can create a "watch list" of sources 
(or positions) of interest, and then select missions  to be monitored for 
each source.  For example a user might be interested in Chandra and 
XMM-Newton observations of 3C 273.  After logging in to the service, the 
user enters 3C 273 in the source box, clicks the Chandra and XMM-Newton 
check boxes, and presses "Submit".  The Notification Service will 
automatically generate a BROWSE query around the position of the source in 
the Chandra and XMM "master" data tables.  The query is checked daily, and 
if the output of the query changes (if a new entry appears, or the status 
of an existing entry changes), the Notification Service will generate an 
e-mail alert and send it to the user.  After logging in, the user can see 
the original query, the new results and the differences between the two, 
and, if new data are available, the user can download them.

If you have any comments, questions or suggested improvements please let us 
know via the Browse mailing list on the HEASARC Feedback page. 
http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/Feedback?selected=w3browse
--
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