ACIS Observers,
Since my last email to chandra-users on the topic of the ACIS Extract
(AE) package in October 2003 development of the package has
continued. New releases and manual updates have been posted
periodically at http://www.astro.psu.edu/xray/docs/TARA/
ae_users_guide.html and have been announced to the AE mailing list.
If you have to deal with a large number of point or diffuse ACIS
sources I encourage you to consider using AE for automated extraction
and spectral fitting. AE uses CIAO tools and XSPEC, and shows you
the CIAO/XSPEC calls it is making. It is not a "black box"
alternative to CIAO---rather it is an IDL "script" that lets you more
efficiently apply CIAO to complex source extraction problems. AE
conveniently supports multiple observations of the same source.
AE was first released to the Contributed Software site at the CXC in
February 2003. It has been used extensively within the ACIS team,
for example on projects such as the Chandra Deep Field North, Chandra
Orion Ultradeep Project, and studies of the Galactic Center. Posters
describing AE were presented at the 2003 HEAD meeting and at the Four
Years of Chandra Observations symposium. There will be a poster at
the Six Years of Science with Chandra symposium.
A detailed, searchable (PDF) User's Guide is available and I try to
respond promptly to inquiries from AE users.
Users of AE are encouraged to join the AE mailing list at https://
phoenix.astro.psu.edu/mailman/listinfo/acis-extract
Development of AE has been generously supported by the ACIS Team (G.
Garmire) and by several star formation Guest Observer projects.
Patrick Broos,
ACIS Team at Penn State University
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