Workshop Preparation

If you are planning on attending an upcoming workshop, please read the following preparation information.

Laptops

You are encouraged to bring a personal laptop to the workshop. This allows you to learn CIAO in the environment you will regularly use, and makes it easy to bring all your workshop hands-on projects back with you.

Computers will be made available if you cannot bring one, but it may require you to work with a partner during the hands-on session.

Your laptop must be able to run CIAO 4.2! Platform support information and installation assistance will be made available after the December 2009 release of CIAO 4.2.

CIAO/Chandra Data questions

If you have already worked with CIAO and/or Chandra data and have questions you would like to ask, we suggest to submit them in advance to Helpdesk. Mention that you are a CIAO workshop attendee, and we will make sure that an answer is ready for you at the time of the workshop.

Suggested pre-workshop reading

If you don't have CIAO available, try installing the software. There are step-by-step instructions available in the Installing CIAO thread.

We also suggest reading and/or trying some of the introductory threads found on the Introductory Threads page.

Working on your own Chandra data:

We encourage you to download your favorite observation from the Chandra Data Archive. If you have no preference, retrieve some of the datasets used in the CIAO threads.

Imaging Data:

• 578 - 3C295, ACIS-S
• 1447 - Cas A, ACIS-I
• 144 - G21.5-0.9, HRC-I
• 1557 - G21.5-0.9, HRC-S

Grating Data

• 459 - 3C273, ACIS/HETG
• 29 - Alpha Cen, HRC-S/LETG

Given the potential proprietary nature of data, participants who wish to analyze their own should be aware of the following conditions:

1. we will download the requested ObsID from the archive beforehand and make them accessible to workshop participants.
2. data may have to be shared with another participant given that pairs of people are working at the computer during the hands-on session. If the working partner wishes to work on a different ObsID, some rotation will be decided by the pair.
3. it is the responsibility of the participants to ftp back to their home institutions any resulting data products they wish to keep. We cannot offer the service of backing data products up.

If you wish to work on proprietary Chandra data:

The PI of the observation needs to send an e-mail to cxchelp@head.cfa.harvard.edu to confirm:

1. that you agree on these conditions
2. the ObsID you would like to use