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             |              CCC  XX   XX    OOO           |
Chandra      |             CC     XX XX    OO OO          | CXC
Electronic   |            CC       XXX    OO   OO         | Number 57
Bulletin     |             CC     XX XX    OO OO          | December
             |              CCC  XX   XX    OOO           | 2006
             |                                            |
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Welcome to the Chandra X-ray Center's Electronic News Bulletin Number 57.

CXC Web site: cxc.harvard.edu

If you would like to unsubscribe from this alias, simply reply to this message
to let us know.  

Please use this website to update your address or email: 
          http://cxc.harvard.edu/cdo/udb/userdat.html

Contents:

1. Chandra Cycle 9 Call for Proposals

2. Chandra at the AAS 

3. HEAD at the AAS 

4. TOO time periods 

5. CIAO 3.4 and CALDB 3.3.0 Released

6. Resumption of Funding for Chandra Grants 

7. Chandra Data Archive: The end of the Provisional Retrieval Interface

8. Podcasts
 
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Item 1.  Chandra Cycle 8 Call for Proposals                        
===========================================                        
                                                                   
The CXC is pleased to announce the release of the Chandra Cycle 9 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: 15 March 2007                                           
                                                                           
Hardcopy documents are available on request to the CXC helpdesk.           
                                                                           

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Item 2.  Chandra at the AAS
===========================


Stop by the Chandra Booth at the AAS in Seattle where we will have:

--Cycle 9 proposal material 

--Sherpa & ChIPS demos from CIAO developers: things to come

--General Chandra news and status

--Or just chat and meet the helpdesk staff.


Nancy R. Evans


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Item 3.  HEAD at the AAS 
========================

Dear Colleagues,

During the January AAS meeting there will be two special HEAD sessions
and a HEAD Business meeting on January 9.  

The HEAD Business meeting will be held during lunch
from 12:45 -1:45 and the location of this meeting is 609.

The HEAD morning session from 10-11:30 is GLAST Science and
Opportunities at All Wavelengths with the following speakers and
topics:

R. D.. Blandford  --
176.01. GLAST Science Across Wavelengths
	
James S.. Ulvestad  --
176.02. Enhancing GLAST Science Through Complementary Radio
Observations
 
Piero Madau --
176.03. Galaxy Formation, Cold Dark Matter Substructure, and GLAST
	
Julie E.. McEnery  --
176.04. GLAST Mission Overview and Science Opportunities


The afternoon session from 2-3:30 is Short Gamma-Ray Bursts and
will include the following speakers and topics:

Chryssa Kouveliotou --
194.01. On the Prompt Gamma-ray Emission Properties of Short GRBs
	
David N. Burrows  --
194.02. X-ray Afterglows of Short Gamma-Ray Bursts
	
Edo Berger --
194.03. The Host Galaxies and Host Clusters of Short Gamma Ray Bursts: 
Constraints on the Progenitor Age Distribution
	
Ehud Nakar --
194.04. Theoretical Interpretation of Short GRB Observations

I look forward to seeing many of you in Seattle.

Thanks,
Christine Jones
HEAD Secretary-Treasurer


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Item 4. TOO time periods
========================


The CXC announces that Cycle 7 TOOs will expire on 1 Jan 2007.
Cycle 8 TOOs may be triggered from 1 Dec 2006.

Thanks

Belinda Wilkes


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Item 5.  CIAO 3.4 and CALDB 3.3.0 Released
==========================================


The Chandra X-ray Center (CXC) is pleased to announce that version 3.4
of CIAO ("Chandra Interactive Analysis of Observations") and version
3.3.0 of CALDB will be available for download next week from:
http://cxc.harvard.edu/ciao/download/

They will also be available from the European mirror site at:
http://ledas-cxc.star.le.ac.uk/ciao/download/
                           -----------------------------------

The CIAO 3.4 and CALDB 3.3.0 releases primarily consist of changes
related to the CTI corrections. The CTI-adjustment algorithm
included in  acis_process_events now accommodates the newly calibrated
serial CTI on the back-illuminated CCDs. This is in addition to the 
continued support for parallel CTI.  This CIAO release also contains
two new tools for working with HRC data hrc_build_badpix,
hrc_dtfstats) and the ability to update WCS in non-Chandra images
(reproject_aspect, wcs_match, wcs_update).  Significant work has been
done on the tool psf_project_ray, which has four new parameters.  Plus
bug fixes to the Data Model library and several CIAO tools. Finally,
this release includes the PIMMS effective area file upgrade required
for Cycle 9 proposal planning. 

For complete information on this release, please see the full Release
Notes (http://cxc.harvard.edu/ciao/releasenotes/) which also include the
section
"How CIAO 3.4 and CALDB 3.3.0 Affect Your Analysis".
                     -----------------------------

In tandem with CIAO 3.4 is the release of the Chandra Calibration
Database CALDB 3.3.0 which contains a new ACIS calibration suite
(N0006), ACIS QE and QEU files, time-dependent HRC-I gain maps and an
HRC-S RMF suitable for calibrating hardness ratios or creating
quantile color-color diagrams.

Detailed information about CALDB 3.3.0 can be found in the Chandra
Calibration Database website at http://cxc.harvard.edu/caldb/
                    ---------------------------------

CIAO 3.4 is distributed for the following platforms:
* Solaris 8 (SunOS 5.8)
* Redhat Linux 6.2
* Redhat Linux 8 [runs also on RedHat 9 and other flavors of Linux]
* Mac OS X 10.2.8 (Jaguar) [binaries compatible with Mac OS X 10.3 and 10.4]

More details at http://cxc.harvard.edu/ciao/download/platforms.html

                   -----------------------------------

As always please send questions and requests for enhancements to the CXC
HELPDESK (http://cxc.harvard.edu/helpdesk/)

CIAO 3.4 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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Item 6.  Resumption of Funding for Chandra Grants
=================================================

The CXC and SAO are pleased to announce that the flow of funds from NASA 
for fiscal year 2007 has now been resumed sufficiently for us to end the hold 
on grants put in place on 13 October. Effective immediately, the SAO grants 
office will issue the backlog of grants held since 13 October, and will resume
issuing grants as observations are conducted.

Belinda Wilkes



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Item 7.  Chandra Data Archive: The end of the Provisional Retrieval Interface
=============================================================================

We repeat here an announcement made a few months ago that the
Provisional Retrieval Interface will be discontinued as of 15 December
2006.
This archaic interface was well beyond its useful life and had become
too hard to maintain. RetrievER offers a far better interface to
access data products associated with Engineering Requests. See the
Chandra Data Archive homepage at http://cxc.harvard.edu/cda/
We may be able to suggest alternative options to users who still used
the PRI for the retrieval of science data; please email
arcops@head.cfa.harvard.edu and provide a description of your needs.


Arnold H. Rots
	


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Item 8.  Podcasts
=================

Podcast installment 7 (Giants of the Universe Probe Cosmic 
Questions) has been added to the Chandra public
website for download. See the link  from the top page or go to
http://chandra.harvard.edu/resources/podcasts/
Chandra podcasts have been added to YouTube and now rank
no. 25 on the itunes natural sciences list. Take a look at this
popular new feature.

Kathy Lestition




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