CHANDRA ELECTRONIC ANNOUNCEMENT NUMBER 89
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Contents:
1. Chandra Cycle 15 Call for Proposals released 13 December 2012
2. CIAO 4.5 and CALDB 4.5.5 released 13 December 2012
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Item 1: Chandra Cycle 15 Call for Proposals released 13 December 2012
==============================================================
The CXC is pleased to announce the release of the Chandra Cycle 15
Call for Proposals (CfP). The Call for Proposals, the Proposers'
Observatory Guide (POG), proposal planning software, and general
information are posted on the "Proposer" web page at the CXC website:
http://cxc.harvard.edu/proposer/
Proposals are due: 14 March 2013
Hardcopy documents are available on request to the CXC HelpDesk
(http://cxc.harvard.edu/helpdesk).
======================
What's New in Cycle 15
======================
* Science Keywords:
The RPS proposal Cover Page now asks for one or more keywords
describing proposal science. Selected keywords may be used to
facilitate preliminary matching of proposals to reviewers, as well as
archive searches. See CfP Section 5.2.2.
* Remote Proposal System (RPS) PDF Uploads:
PIs with previous approved Chandra programs (PCP) must provide, as
space allows in a 1-page PDF, a list of programs for which they were
PI, including proposal number and title, and briefly describing
program status and resulting publications. The RPS now requires
separate upload of PDFs for the science justification, the PCP (if
required), and (an optional) CV. See CfP Section 5.2.10 for details.
* Boundaries Clearly Specified for TOO categories:
Very Fast 0=30
where t=start time of the response window. The minimum expected
response time for a TOO is 24 hours. Refer to CfP Section 4.4 for
details.
* New and Revived Joint Programs:
Swift time can now be proposed through the Chandra Peer Review, for
science that requires observations from both observatories. Spitzer
joint time is again available through the Chandra Peer Review. Refer
to CfP Section 4.5 for details.
* Prohibition of Bilateral USA-China Collaborations:
Proposals which represent a bilateral collaboration between the US
and the People's Republic of China cannot be accepted. Please refer
to CfP Sections 3.1 and Appendix A.4 for more details. Note that
multilateral collaborations including China are generally
permitted.
* Primary Institute:
To be eligible for funding (for either the PI or Co-Is), a
U.S. Institution MUST be specified on the RPS form, and must be the
primary institution of the investigator seeking funds. See CfP
Section 5.2.2.
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Item 2: CIAO 4.5 and CALDB 4.5.5 released 13 December 2012*
==============================================================
The Chandra X-ray Center (CXC) is pleased to announce that version 4.5
of CIAO ("Chandra Interactive Analysis of Observations") and version
4.5.5 of CALDB ("Calibration Database") are available for download from:
http://cxc.harvard.edu/ciao/download/
Notable changes and improvements in CIAO 4.5:
* The new*tg_findzo* tool helps users locate the zeroth order
location for heavily piled sources and in the observations that have
intentionally masked out the zero order events.
* Various updates related to creating merged datasets, especially
larger mosaics that exceed the standard image sizes. This includes
updates to *reproject_events* and *dmmerge* to adjust the limits based
on the data and to *dmextract* to keep a consistent definition of
BACKSCAL regardless of image size.
**Sherpa* updates includes a comprehensive review of how grouping and
filtering interact when both source and background datasets are in
use. Also, a new sample_flux routine is available to allow users to
compute the flux due to a sub-component of a Sherpa model; and
the *modelflux* tool has been upgraded to calculate unabsorbed as well
as absorbed flux.
* In *ChIPS* it is now possible annotate plots directly either via the
GUI or by right-clicking on plots; text, points, lines, ellipses,
boxes, polygon, and even color bars can be added.
* Numerous bug fixes and enhancements were made to many parts of the
system including speed enhancements to wavdetect, fixes to ChIPS
clobbering existing files, and Obsvis upgrades for number of allowed
CCDs.
**NOTE*: as previously announced,*the mkpsf tool has been withdrawn*
from CIAO; users should use ChaRT and MARX to simulate 2D models of
the point spread function.
Read the complete CIAO 4.5 release notes, including the section "How
CIAO 4.5 and CALDB 4.5.5 Affect Your Analysis" at:
http://cxc.harvard.edu/ciao/releasenotes/ciao_4.5_release.html
---------------------------------
CIAO 4.5 is distributed for the following platforms:
* Linux 32-bit and 64-bit
* Mac OS X Intel 10.6 (Snow Leopard),
10.7 (Lion) and 10.8 (Mountain Lion) 64-bit
More details at http://cxc.harvard.edu/ciao/download/platforms.html
-----------------------------------
In tandem with CIAO 4.5 is the release of the Chandra Calibration
Database version 4.5.5
CalDB 4.5.5 includes the following new items:
1. ACIS T_GAIN Epoch 51
2. ACIS time-dependent QEU files version N0007
3. HRC-I GMAP and PIBGSPEC for Sept 2012
4. HRC-S QE versions N0012
5. PIMMS Effective Area CY15 files
6, Header correction for ACIS Group E BKGRND files
7. Header changes to specific ACIS CTI and DET_GAIN files for
optimized file selection.
Detailed information can be found in the Chandra Calibration Database
website at http://cxc.harvard.edu/caldb/
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As always please send questions and requests for enhancements to the
CXC HELPDESK (http://cxc.harvard.edu/helpdesk/).
CIAO 4.5 is a collaborative effort between the SAO/CXC Science Data
Systems, the SAO/CXC Data Systems, and MIT/CXC personnel.
Antonella Fruscione (for the CIAO development team)
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