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Chandra      |             CC     XX XX    OO OO          | CXC
Electronic   |            CC       XXX    OO   OO         | Number 81
Bulletin     |             CC     XX XX    OO OO          | 4 March 2009
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Welcome to the Chandra X-ray Center's Electronic News Bulletin Number 81.

CXC Web site: cxc.harvard.edu

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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 Source Catalog

2.   Mission Planning Position

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Item 1. Chandra Source Catalog
==============================


The Chandra X-ray Center is pleased to announce that the first official
release of the Chandra Source Catalog (CSC) is now available for use by
the astronomical community.

The CSC is being released to the user community in a series of
increments with increasing capability.  Release 1 of the CSC includes
94,688 sources detected in a subset of ACIS imaging observations
released publicly prior to the start of 2009.  Point and compact
sources, with observed spatial extents < ~30 arcsec, are included in
this release.

The CSC provides simple access to Chandra data for individual sources
or sets of sources matching user-specified search criteria.  For each
X-ray source, the catalog includes directly measured properties for
the sources, such as positions and multi-band count rates, together
with numerous commonly used derived quantities such as source extent
estimates, multi-band aperture fluxes, hardness ratios, and temporal
variability information.  In addition, the catalog includes associated
file-based data products that can be manipulated interactively by the
user, including images, photon event lists, light curves, and spectra
for each source individually from each observation in which a source
is detected.

Data access is provided by the CSCview GUI, which may be accessed from
the catalog web site:

                 http://cxc.cfa.harvard.edu/csc/

Extensive user documentation, including a detailed description of the
catalog contents and their statistical properties, may also be found on
the catalog web site.

Please note:

o The CSC is capable of supporting many diverse scientific
  investigations.  However, the catalog is constructed from pointed
  observations obtained using the Chandra X-ray Observatory; it is not
  an all-sky catalog, and does not include sources detected to a
  uniform depth.  Users should carefully review the "Caveats and
  Limitations" section of the catalog web site when assessing the
  efficacy of the catalog for their particular line of enquiry.

o Java version 1.5 or greater must be installed on your system to use
  the CSCview GUI.

- --Ian N. Evans for The CSC Project Team



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Item 2.  Mission Planning Position
==================================


The CXC would like to call the attention of interested candidates to the
availability of a position with the Chandra Science Mission
Planning Team.  Beyond a strong interest in hands-on participation in
the operation of a major space observatory, qualifications include a
solid background in physics, math, astronomy, and computing.  Positions
of this kind have often been an excellent learning opportunity for
recent holders of bachelor's degrees looking for several years'
experience before proceeding to graduate school, but have also been
filled by persons with a variety of other backgrounds and planned career
paths.  If interested, please respond to the announcement for Job #29-14
at
  http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/hr/postings/index.html
or contact Jan Vrtilek (jvrtilek@cfa.harvard.edu) or Pat Slane
(pslane@cfa.harvard.edu) directly.

Jan Vrtilek  for the Mission Planning Team


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