long hk and mkf selection expressions in xselect

The Suzaku XIS team ran into a problem with a really long hk selection expression in xselect. I've increased the relevant strings to 4098 characters which should be enough for the moment.

swind1 fix

The swind1.f source file available on the extra models page had an error reported by Roderick Johnstone - lenact was not declared. Fixed this.

gfortran and mac

Just for future reference here is the link for the gfortran plug-in to Xcode.

hardcopy in xspec v12

The hardcopy command is implemented through a script hardcopy.tcl in Xspec/src/scripts. This script had an error and didn't work. Note that implementing a command through a script means that abbreviating the command doesn't work.

uninitialized string in xinfix

Glenn Morris reported bizarre behaviour in xspec11 when giving setplot an invalid argument. This turned out to be an uninitialized string in xanlib/xparse/xinfix.f which has somehow avoided detection before now. Note that we really need to fix the Makefile in xspec11/src/tcl so that libxantcl*.a is rebuilt if libxanlib*.a is changed.

compps model

Hiromitsu Takahashi reports that the compps model in xspec seg faults when using the Suzaku XIS response. This is because there were hard-wired array sizes in xscompps.f. I replaced these by dynamic arrays using the standard method as well as removing some unused variables. This change in is v11.3.2ae and will be in v12 shortly.

Preprints

Gliozzi et al. describe Chandra observations of three Sy IIs whose variability and spectral properties are similar to Sy Is implying these may be AGN without a BLR.

Heavens et al. extend the Fisher Matrix to provide a way of estimating how good a planned experiment will be at distinguishing between different models.

Gilmore reviews the six types of stellar populations in the Galaxy and what can be learned from their study.

Liddle et al reply to a critique of Bayesian model selection by Linder & Miquel noting that the latter authors have made three serious errors in understanding the conceptual underpinnings of the method.

Ignatiev discusses a possible terrestrial test for MOND !

Mahdavi et al. present a joint X-ray, SZ, and weak-lensing analysis of A478.

Ebeling et al. provide a statistically complete subset of the 12 most massive clusters at z>0.5 found in MACS.

Micic et al. estimate the evolution of seed BHs to IMBH and SMBH using cosmological N-body simulations.

Boehringer et al. introduce a survey with XMM of a representative sample of clusters which is designed to investigate the uncertainties in determining cosmological parameters from X-ray cluster surveys.

Smith et al. investigate biassing effects in measuring the baryonic acoustic signature.

Maughan uses his sample of 116 clusters observed using Chandra to investigate the Lx-Yx relation and finds that excludes cores produces a tight relation with 11% scatter in Lx.

Padmanabhan et al. achieve a ~1% photometric calibration of the SDSS.

extractor bug in Intel Mac

Jamie Kennea reports problems with extractor on Intel Mac when filtering on a region. If an indirect file was in use for the input event files it was being opened multiple times and not closed. Eventually this generated an error in the fortran open statement. Also moved the ADDFN routine from extractor.f to wstdky.f because it was only being called from WSTDKY. These fixes are v4.76 and go out with HEAsoft 6.2.

Followed up with a whole bunch of mainly cosmetic changes to eliminate most of the compiler warning messages from g95. This is v4.77 and is not part of HEAsoft 6.2.

Another iteration for 4.78 which simplifies the code for reading the file containing the names of input event files and ensures that this file is not opened again when it is already open.

Preprints

Russell et al. use MCMC to do a joint analysis of Chandra and ROSAT data on the cool core group NGC 4325.

Holder et al. estimate the SZ background and consider the limits on SZ cluster measurements due to confusion effects.

Zhang et al. look at the X-ray properties and scaling relations for 12 z~0.2 clusters observed by XMM-Newton and note that if the central cores are excluded then normalizations agree to 10% irrespective of cluster morphology.

Chartas et al. analyze Chandra and XMM observations of the gravitationally lensed low ionization broad absorption line quasar H1413+117 and detect emission lines.

Fujita et al. look at MHD Alfven waves as a heating method for cool cores in clusters and note that they would also create longitudinal (sound) waves observable as ripples.

Bogdanovic et al. argue that torques during galaxy mergers will tend to align the spins of their MBHs thus reducing gravitational radiation kicks when the MBHs merge.

Ciotti & Ostriker perform high-res hydro simulations with photoionization and Compton heating to investigate the effects of an AGN on the ISM of an isolated early type galaxy.

Trotta presents a new procedure for estimating the Bayes factor of future observation to help with experiment design.

Scharf considers the effects of parallax on exoplanet timing measurements.

Giommi et al. use Swift to measure the X-ray fluxes of blazars which are CMB foreground sources and show that there is a tight correlation between X-ray and microwave fluxes.

Maughan et al. present a summary of the analysis of ACIS-I observations of 116 clusters from z of 0.1 to 1.3.

The HiRes Collaboration detect the GZK cut-off at 6e19 eV, precisely as predicted.