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             |              ccc  XX   XX    OOO           |
Chandra      |             CC     XX XX    OO OO          | CXC
Electronic   |            CC       XXX    OO   OO         | Number 89
Bulletin     |             CC     XX XX    OO OO          | November
             |              CCC  XX   XX    OOO           | 2009
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Welcome to the Chandra X-ray Center's Electronic News Bulletin Number 89.

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.  New Chandra Observations Planned for Chandra Deep Field South

2.  7th Chandra/CIAO Workshop

3.  November release of the tarfile of CIAO contributed science 

4.  Chandra Source Catalog User Interface Updates 

 
 
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Item 1.  New Chandra Observations Planned for Chandra Deep Field South
======================================================================

The Chandra X-ray Center Director's Office and the Chandra Project
Scientist are pleased to announce our commitment of 2Ms of Chandra
Director's Discretionary Time (DDT) to extend the exposure for the
Chandra Deep Field South (CDFS) from 2Ms to 4Ms.

We intend to use 1Ms of unused DDT from Cycles 9 and 10 and to allocate
500ks not yet committed for Cycle 11 (which begins next month) and 500ks
for Cycle 12. This will leave about 200ks for other DDT requests in each
of Cycles 11 and 12. The CDFS observations are likely to be scheduled by
allocating 1.2Ms this coming Spring and 0.8Ms in Spring 2011 during
Cycle 12. These data will have no associated proprietary rights. We 
anticipate releasing the new data in 2 segments: one in June/July 2010 
and the other in June/July 2011.

The Chandra Call for Proposals for Cycle 12 to be issued on Dec 15 of
this year will describe a special category for archival proposals to
analyze the full set of new CDFS data. We intend to allocate a total of
~$500K of DDT funding from Cycles 10 and 11 to cover this special
opportunity. The use of the budgeted DDT funds assures that this special 
DDT program will not impact the planned budgets for upcoming General 
Observer and Archival Research proposals. We intend to use the regular 
June 2010 Cycle 12 Peer Review to assess the CDFS proposals and to 
recommend those highest ranked for funding.

Harvey Tananbaum
Martin Weisskopf
Belinda Wilkes


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Item 2.  7th Chandra/CIAO Workshop
==================================

	---------------------------------------
		1-3 February 2010
	-----------------------------------------
	Chandra X-ray Center, Cambridge Mass, USA
  	------------------------------------------
		FIRST ANNOUNCEMENT


	The Chandra X-Ray Center (CXC) is announcing the seventh
in a series of workshops started in 2001 aimed at helping users to work 
with the Chandra Interactive Analysis of Observations (CIAO) software
(http://cxc.harvard.edu/ciao/)

	The seventh workshop will be held at the Center for Astrophysics in 
Cambridge, MA (USA) on 1-3 February 2010. There is no registration fee 
to attend. This workshop will be largely based on CIAO 4.2 which is 
planned for release in December 2009.

	Online registration will open next week at
http://cxc.harvard.edu/ciao/workshop/register_form.html
We are expecting to accept the first 30 registered participants.
	Details of the program will be posted on the CIAO Workshop web site at 
http://cxc.harvard.edu/ciao/workshop

	Please direct any questions about this workshop through the CXC 
HelpDesk (http://cxc.harvard.edu/helpdesk/

Antonella Fruscione and the workshop organizing team



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Item 3.   November release of the tarfile of CIAO contributed science    
=====================================================================


The CIAO team is pleased to announce the November release of the
CIAO contributed science tarfile. 

The CIAO Contributed science tarfile contains analysis scripts and 
modules that extend the functionality of CIAO.  The contributed scripts 
are written and maintained by local CIAO users at the CXC. More 
information on each of the scripts is available from the CIAO 4.1 
Contributed Scripts Page 
(http://cxc.harvard.edu/ciao/download/scripts/). Check that page for 
announcements about new scripts and updates to existing ones.

The changes in this release are:

o) SherpaCL

Initial release of the experimental sherpacl application that allows 
users to use CIAO 3.4 syntax for Sherpa and ChIPS commands in CIAO 4. 
The language that can be used is currently limited. Refer to "ahelp 
sherpacl" and the sherpa website 
(http://cxc.harvard.edu/sherpa/sherpacl/) for more information and usage 
examples.

We welcome user feedback on this project via the CXC HelpDesk 
(http://cxc.harvard.edu/helpdesk/).

o) New deflare script

The deflare script allows users to create a GTI filter from a background 
lightcurve using either the lc_clean or lc_sigma_clip methods directly 
from the UNIX prompt, without having to start up ChIPS or Sherpa.

o) Improvements to lc_clean and lc_sigma_clip

Both routines have been updated to better handle data with "extreme" 
lightcurves: either by erroring out or being able to create GTI files 
which contain a large number of time intervals.

The screen output (when verbose is set) has been modified to provide
more information on the length of each interval.

Doug Burke for the CIAO team



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Item 4. Chandra Source Catalog User Interface Updates
=====================================================

A. NEW! CSC-SDSS Cross-match Catalog

    A new catalog that identifies source cross-matches between Release
    1 of the Chandra Source Catalog (CSC) and Data Release 7 of the
    Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) is now available.  The cross-match
    catalog includes approximately 17,000 sources that have a match
    probability of at least 50% (includes ~12,000 with probability 
    > 90%).  A web-based interface allows users to search the cross-
    match catalog and return key CSC and SDSS properties for matching
    sources, together with their separations and match probabilities.

    Users interested in trying out this new interface can go to

         http://cxc.cfa.harvard.edu/cgi-gen/cda/CSC-SDSSxmatch.html

    or click on the "CSC-SDSS Cross-match Catalog" link on the main 
    catalog website:

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

B. UPDATED! All Chandra fields of view added to CSC Sky in Google Earth

    CSC Sky is easy to download and use, and makes use of Google Earth
    installed on your personal computer.  A recent update to CSC Sky
    allows the Field of View (FoV) outlines for all completed Chandra
    observations (not just those that are included in the CSC) to be
    optionally displayed.  The FoV outlines are color coded by
    instrument.  This makes it easy to determine whether a particular
    region of the sky has been observed by Chandra.

    Users interested in trying out this new interface can go to

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

    or click on the "CSC Sky in Google Earth" link on the main catalog
    website.

--Ian Evans and Arnold Rots for The CSC Project Team



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