New RXTE Science & Products/XTENews E-mail Transition

[RXTE GOF <xtenews@bigbang.gsfc.nasa.gov>]

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Contents:

1) Latest RXTE Science Results
2) RXTE Presentation to NASA's Senior Review
3) New RXTE "Mission-Long" Data Products
4) XTEnews E-mail Address Migration (<--- please read!)

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1) Latest RXTE Science Results

Several RXTE discoveries have made the news so far this year.
In February, Fotis Gavriil and collaborators announced the
discovery of "magnetar-like bursts from a normal young pulsar,"
suggesting a kind of "missing link" between different types
of pulsars.  The press release and link to their Science paper
can be found at:
 http://rxte.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/xte/xhp_new.html#_nslink

More recently, Diego Altamirano led a team of researchers that 
discovered how to predict x-ray bursts in the low mass x-ray 
binary system 4U 1636-53.  The press release and results, which
appeared in ApJ and in Deigo's recent PhD thesis, are available
at:
 http://rxte.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/xte/xhp_new.html#_pr080430

With Diego's thesis, we now know of 83 PhD theses that have
been based on RXTE data!  You can find them at:
 http://rxte.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/xte/whatsnew/xte_phds.html

If you know of a thesis we're missing, send it to the address
on the PhD page (there's a link under the page title)

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2) RXTE Presentation to NASA's Senior Review

NASA's Mission Operations & Data Analysis Senior Review panel
met this spring to apportion funding for the next two years among 
more than a dozen NASA astrophysics missions.  The RXTE team made
its presentation to the panel on April 24, requesting the RXTE
mission be extended for another two years beginning March 2009.  
Project Scientist Jean Swank and Users' Group chair John Tomsick 
led the presentation. The senior review results are expected 
by early summer.

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3) New RXTE "Mission-Long" Data Products

The RXTE Guest Observer Facility (GOF) has begun generating Mission-Long
Data Products based on the standard data products (StdProds) from the
PCA and HEXTE, for over 200 sources that have been observed many times
with RXTE during its mission.  These products combine all "good" RXTE 
observations for a given source, over the lifetime of the RXTE mission.

The mission-long data products are intended to give a researcher an idea
of how much, and what quality of, data are available in the RXTE public
archive for their sources of interest. They are not meant to replace the
careful reduction and analysis by individual scientists, but rather to
lead them towards data that will be suitable to their needs. Users should
bear in mind that only a single point is included for an observation. And
thus the impressive variability seen by many RXTE targets on short
timescales is entirely overlooked in the mission-long data products.

For more information, see our Mission-Long Data Products Guide:

  http://rxte.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/xte/recipes/mllc_start.html

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4) XTENews E-mail Address Migration

We apologize for the multiple emails you may receive; NASA is
consolidating to a single email list system. The XTE News email
exploder will soon migrate over to the new NASA list manager. The
online subscription form will still work, but if you have spam
filtering in place the emails will now be coming from:

 xtenews@lists.nasa.gov

So please add that or *lists.nasa.gov to your "allow" list if needed.

Also, with the changeover you will receive a confirmation email which
includes details on how to unsubscribe or change your address in the
new system.

All of our current email news lists are being migrated, and you may
receive multiple requests to resubscribe to the different lists that
you are on.

One advantage of the new system is that for a single email address,
you will be able to manage/update many of the NASA lists that you are on.

If you are subscribed under multiple email addresses for different
lists (e.g., "name@univ.edu" and "name@astro.univ.edu") you may want
to unsubscribe and resubscribe to use just one address. (This will
help for the monthly confirmations that will be sent out.)  The
mailing list software will send you more directions about all this 
after you confirm your subscription.

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