Unable to save file in xspec v11

Glenn Morris reported that when xspec v11 is built using gcc4 then the save command will not allow an existing filename to be overwritten. This turned out to be because in this case the Fortran OPEN command returns an IOSTAT=1, not IOSTAT=128 as per gcc3. This breaks the code in OPENWR in sys.lnx and sys.darwin. Fixed in v11.3.2ah by using an INQUIRE in these two files to check for a pre-existing file.

Note that the sys.* options are labelled by operating system however all those running gcc should be the same (eg sys.lnx and sys.darwin).

invalid filter expressions in extractor

Extractor was silently ignoring invalid filters attached to filenames eg infile.fits[pi>100]. Now it at least generates an error message. Note that the only allowed filters are of form name=#:#. v4.79

xspec v11 bug in HEAsoft 6.3

One of my minor mods to xspec v11 to support the use of the gfortran compiler introduced a bug in the addcomp command - inserting a component into the model caused the name of the final component to be changed to CPCMOD. Thanks to a report from Lisa Winter we caught this within a week of the HEAsoft 6.3 release and have updated the tar files.

xspec v11 on 64-bit Linux

Glenn Morris reported the very strange error "Fit parameter*** belongs to no model" when running xspec v11 on a 64-bit machine with RHEL4. We have established that this is a function of compiling using gcc/g77 3.4.6 and upgrading to gcc/gfortran 4 (ie RHEL5) solves the problem.

Preprints

Roelofs et al. derive parallaxes for a set of AM CVn binaries and predict LISA GW signals.

Dietrich et al. describe BLOX, a program to select galaxy clusters based on optical, X-ray and weak lensing shear.

Percival et al. measure the baryon oscillation signal at z=0.2 and z=0.35 using SDSS and 2dFGRS to constrain w=-1.004 +/- 0.089 for a flat model including the supernova and CMB constraints.

Wallin et al. place limits on deviations from Newtonian gravity in the outer Solar System through observations of the orbits of TNOs.

Markevitch points out that X-ray emission from clusters of galaxies depends on the He abundance in their cores which is unknown (and may be enhanced due to sedimentation). Combining SZ measurements with distances determined using other techniques can be used to estimate the He abundance.

Ruiter et al. calculate the LISA foreground due to mass-transferring binaries and find that it becomes significant at frequencies above ~7 mHz.

Bickel et al. develop methods for searching for periodicity in photon event times with application in the gamma-ray regime.

Prix & Whelan apply F-statistic methods developed for LIGO to the MLDC binary challenges.

srcut and sresc seg fault in xspec v12

Heather Matheson at U.Manitoba reported that srcut seg faults in v12. This turned out to be due to an error in the C++ to Fortran conversion for the power-law routine that is called by srcut and sresc.

another seg fault in compps

I had a slight error in the dynamic memory allocation for the compps model which caused a potential seg fault if the response had < 88 energy bins. This is patched in both v11 and v12.

Preprints

Jee et al. use weak-lensing analysis of Cl0024+17 and find a ring of dark matter which they interpret as the result of a high-velocity line-of-sight collision.

Tsalmantza et al. present the first results from a program to generate a library of synthetic galaxy spectra to be used to classify the several million unresolved galaxies whose spectra will be acquired by Gaia.

Wu & Wang calculate Fe K line shapes from relativistic accreting disks including the effects of self-shadowing.

Tornatore et al. use hydro simulations to investigate chemical evolution in clusters of galaxies.

Trimble et al. summarize astrophysics in 2006.

Padmanabhan reviews dark energy cosmology, argues that only a cosmological constant makes sense and that the problem cannot be satisfactorily solved at our current level of (mis)understanding.

Fiore et al. combine optical, IR, and X-ray observations of the Chandra Deep Field South to identify the Compton-thick AGN that have so far been missing from deep Chandra observations.

Kelly describes a Bayesian approach using Gaussian mixtures for linear regression in the presence of measurement errors, non-detections, and selection effects.

Eckert et al. analyze a 1.1Ms Integral ISGRI observation of the Coma cluster to find an extended hard X-ray excess in the direction of the infalling cluster A1376.

Sanders & Fabian continue their analysis of the very deep Chandra observation of the Perseus cluster finding a) the ripples interpreted as sound waves carry a significant fraction of the energy lost to radiative cooling b) the distribution of metals peaks at 40 kpc and is clumpy on scales of 5 kpc c) there is no evidence for thermal emission from the radio bubbles.

Repin et al. give analytic approximations for the relativistic Fe K line shape from accretion disks. A table is available.

gsmooth

Jeremy Sanders provides a faster version of the gsmooth model which precalculates an array of erf values then interpolates on them.

Preprints

Stanek proposes a an alternative history version of astro-ph for failed telescope and other proposals. Probably should have come out on Apr 1.

Feroz & Hobson describe an efficient sampling method for multimodel and/or degenerate distributions when calculating Bayesian evidence.

Hallman et al. use numerical simulations to show that using beta-model fits to X-ray data in the analysis of SZE observations leads to systematic biases and suggest a simple correction.

Miller reviews relativistic X-ray lines from the inner regions of accretion disks.

Magliocchetti & Bruggen combine X-ray data from the REFLEX and NORAS samples and radio data from the NVSS to investigate the effects of radio sources on the cluster L_X-T relation.

Kitaura & Ensslin survey Bayesian reconstruction schemes for large-scale structure.

Kerkyacharian et al. present a new estimation method for the inverse problem building on SVD decomposition.

building with gfortran

Successfully built headas on my Mac using the gfortran from the installer supplied at gcc.gnu.org. This places the gfortran library files in /usr/local/gfortran/lib so configure has to be altered so that F77LIBS4C in hmakerc includes this directory. If the gfortran plug-in for Xcode is used then the gfortran library files end up in /usr/local/lib which is in the link path anyway so need not be specified in F77LIBS4C. Also had to update cctools to avoid an undefined dso_handle. Had to add DHAVE_ETIME=1 to DEFS in hmakerc to ensure that etime is not defined again in xanlib/sysdep/sysc.c.

Not directly connected to gfortran but we discovered cod.dhf was not being built - this requires running hlpdhf on cod.hlp which means ensuring ia/doc is built ahead of qdp.

udmget : Too many blocks error

Both Roderick Johnstone and Ewan O'Sullivan have reported getting "Too many blocks" errors when using xspec v11 with complicated models. MAXBLK is set to 100 in udmget.c and there is no good reason why this should be so small. I've changed this to 1000 for the next release which should solve these problems.

Note that Bryan has updated xspec/src/tcl/Makefile so that it will rebuild libxantcl* when changes are made in the libxanlib* library. I really should be building libxantcl under the xanlib tree rather than the somewhat bizarre way it is done at present under the xspec tree.

hk file extension numbers in xselect

Change requested by Suzaku XIS team to allow multiple extensions in HK files. The read hk command now allows an extension to be given eg filename+3. This entire name plus extension is passed to maketime when doing a select hk. The code change does in principle allow the same syntax to be used when reading an event file however this is disabled because in some places xselect appends a +1 extension descriptor to the event file name.

xspec v11 and gfortran block data problem

Put in workarounds for the block data initialization problem with gfortran. None of these should have any discernible effect but we shall see. The changes were in the default values for genfit, the default names for model components, the default gain parameters in response, and the atdata.f routine used by the NEI models.

This latter has been changed in xspec v12 as well.

Errors on fluxes of model components

A frequently requested enhancement for xspec is to be able to estimate the error on the flux from part of the model eg the model without Galactic absorption. I've now written a more detailed explanation and provided a helpful Tcl script. It should be possible to incorporate this functionality within xspec itself.

gfortran compiler and BLOCK DATA

The gfortran compiler appears to have a known issue with intializing common variables in a BLOCK DATA. This leads to problems in xparse with the XPRSBD block and causes msetup to fail. The workaround is to create a dummy routine which calls XPRSBD and insert a call in any xparse routine that uses variables in the BLOCK DATA. This fixes the problem and xspec v11 builds and runs the session/xspec.xcm script successfully. However, there are other BLOCK DATA in HEAsoft so we need to make similar fixes for them. Note that in Fortran 90 and later code BLOCK DATA is supposed to be replaced by MODULE.

xspec background models

I wrote a slightly longer explanation of the v12 replacement for v11 /b models. I also added a link from the xspec FAQ.

Preprints

Evans et al. describe the on-line database of Swift GRB lightcurves.

Tombesi et al. find a variable redshifted Fe K line with a modulation timescale of 27 ksec using XMM observations of NGC3783.

Bonavita & Desidera note from a literature search that there appears to be no difference between planet detection rates in single and binary star systems.

Migliori et al. analyze XMM observations of the radio lobes of Pictor A and finds that the particle energy is above the equipartition value and that spacial changes in radio flux are due to magnetic field variation.

Zhang et al. discuss how to test standard gravity on cosmological scales by comparing matter overdensity to gravitational lensing.

Kurucz argues that the exoplanets detected so far are "cryptoplanets" formed from matter ejected by protostars.

Bryan et al. (the CMU astrostatisticians) present a new method to determine multidimensional confidence intervals and apply it to the cosmological data.

Porter & Ferland discuss the addition of He I like lines to Cloudy and their use for diagnostics.

Afshordi considers the accuracy of mass estimates from SZ surveys of clusters.

Erickcek et al. note that the X-ray quantum calorimeter (XQC) rocket flight can be used to place strong constraints on interaction cross-sections between baryons and dark matter.

Rudnick et al. point out that the WMAP cold-spot corresponds to a dip in the number counts of NVSS sources. If this is Sachs-Wolfe effect it would require a void of radius 140 Mpc.

Werner et al. analyze XMM and Suzaku observations of Sersic 159-03 and find a central soft excess but no evidence for lines ruling out thermal sources.

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.

chandra response matrix generation in xselect

Updated the perl script xsl_chandra_acis_makeresp to replace old ftools with new heatools and improve the search for the bad pixel file. Outstanding issues are that mkacisrmf doesn't work with old event files (fails to find a relevant CALDB file) presumably because these event files have to be reprocessed in CIAO 3.4; the current advice is to use mkarf for point sources and mkwarf for extended sources - at present we use mkwarf for all sources; there should be a mechanism for the user to give their own bad pixel file.

bug in kerrbb

There is a memory handling bug in kerrbb (due to my error) which can cause a seg fault if multiple response matrices are in use and the first one does not have the largest number of energy bins. This is fixed in both v11 and v12.

filter intensity in xselect

Another iteration on the filter intensity perl script in xselect. Replaced most of the calls to old ftools with their heatools analogs. This seems to fix a problem with long filenames.

bug in extractor when combining event files

Fixed bug reported by Phil Evans when creating a new event file from multiple input event files with different WCS values. If the sky X and Y columns were integers the new values were calculated as an INT after doing the transformation instead of a NINT causing a possible one pixel shift. Also did some optimization of the code. v4.74.

Update: Also found that the goodfwcs logical variable in EXTWCS was not being initialized which was causing the position recalculation not to occur in some circumstances. v4.75

Keywords: HEAsoft, extractor.

xspec error with the migrad method

There was a bug in xspec v12 when using the error command with the migrad method. If there were frozen parameters the wrong parameter number was being passed to the MINOS command.

A useful tip to know when using migrad is that the standard MINUIT output is written to the file mn_output.log in the current directory.

Handy C++ tip: there is a function, distance, associated with maps to return the distance in the first index of the map between two iterators. So if we have a map called mymap and an iterator called iter then the position in the map list of iter is 1+distance(mymap.begin(),iter).

Keywords: HEAsoft, xspec

keV-Angstrom conversion factor in xspec

Both v11 and v12 xspec use a conversion factor from keV to Angstrom of 12.39854. Using the current standard values of constants (CODATA(2002) via NIST) this factor should be 12.3984191. Apparently the difference is noticeable when plotting grating spectra in wavelengths. Made this change in both v11 (bug fix 11.3.2ac) and v12.

Keywords: HEAsoft, xspec

text size in the PGPLOT PS driver

Another tweak of the new PGPLOT PS driver to get the text size closer to that appearing on the screen with other drivers. Also, moved the code to calculate the correction to the string length from grlen to the driver.

Keywords: HEAsoft, pgplot

ranlux in xspec11

xspec11 crashes when compiled using gfortran apparently due to a problem with ranlux. So replaced xanlib/sysdep/ranlux.f with C code based on the gsl version but with gsl-specific parts stripped out. Note that only the RLUXGO and RANLUX Fortran calls are supported and that RLUXGO ignores the final two arguments (K1 and K2) ie the restart option is not supported.

Keywords: HEAsoft, xspec

Preprints

Portegies Swart et al. test using modern Graphics Processing Units to perform N-body calculations and conclude they show some cost and reliability benefits over specialised hardware.

Brownstein & Moffatt argue that the bullet cluster results are consistent with modified gravity and not with dark matter.

Evrard et al. use an ensemble of heirarchical clustering simulations to argue that sigma_8 = 0.8 in contrast to the best-fit number of 0.69 favored by recent WMAP and SDSS analysis.

Lodato & Natarajan derive the seed function of mass BHs at z~15.

Krongold et al. use an XMM observation of NGC4051 to track changes in the ionization state of the warm absorber and deduce that it comes from an accretion disk wind not the dusty torus.

Schafer provides a statistically rigorous method of estimating luminosity function using truncated data.

Rossetti & Molendi fire back in the controversy over the existence of a non-thermal tail in the X-ray spectrum of the Coma cluster.

Medvedev examines evaporation rates of hot gas from clusters as a possible explanation of recent S-Z results and concludes that for the mechanism to work magnetic fields must be non-existent or highly ordered.

Seto & Cooray discuss a technique for placing limits on primordial BH densities by using pulsar timing measurements to look for impulsive accelerations on the Earth.

Linder & Miquel warn against applying model selection procedures in cosmology without adequate thought about physics.

Hickox & Markevitch look at Chandra deep field data excluding all known HST and Spitzer sources to provide a limit on X-ray emission from the WHIM.

Fusco-Femiano et al. continue the data about the Coma hard X-ray emission.

Chen et al. use ROSAT and ASCA observations of HIFLUGCS clusters to investigate the statistical properties of cooling cores.

Zavlin reviews what is known about thermal emission from neutron stars.

Johnstone et al. analyze the Spitzer 10-37 micron spectra from off-nuclear regions in NGC1275 and 4696.

extractor and string columns

Phil Evans reported a problem that when combining two event files a string column in the output was garbage for all rows copied from the second input file. This happened because the input files had differing WCS so the slow copy method had to be used and this read all columns as doubles. Fixed the problem by checking for string columns and reading/writing them as strings. Note that strings can have a maximum length of 256 characters. Fix is v4.73.


Keywords: HEAsoft, extractor

r1mach routine in xspec v11

An internal change to allow compilation using gfortran : the fortran r1mach routine which was included in the file functions/cont.f has been replaced by a C version (with appropriate cfortran macro) in the new file functions/r1mach.c. This should have no effect visible to users. The analogous change has already been made in v12.

Keywords: HEAsoft, xspec

chatter in xselect

Binbin Zhang asks a question about using chatter in xselect. The chatter command is handled through the xpi gtcom2 call but was not defined in xselect.key and xselect.kw so was rejected as an unknown command. Modified these files so that chatter is now recognised. However, all output from xselect is at chatter=5 so unless we make changes to the xselwrite calls we can either see all the output or none of it.

Keywords: xselect, HEAsoft

Preprints

Roncarelli et al. calculate the thermal and kinetic SZ signals from a large cosmology simulation and look at correlations with the soft X-ray signal.

Bolton et al. use strong lensing data to replace the surface brightness with mass density in the fundamental plane relation for ellipticals and show that the variance decreases and the tilt is removed implying that early type galaxies are an homologous sequence varying in mass-to-light ratio.

Mathews & Brighenti describe how cosmic rays produced by an AGN generate the cavities and radio sources seen in X-ray emitting clusters.

Edmondson et al. discuss frequentist and Bayesian estimation of photometric redshifts.

Krivinos et al. present results from the Integral/IBIS all-sky survey in the 17-60 keV band.

Ghosh & Raychaudhuri discuss the effect of systematic errors on time series data.

Shaw et al. describe a more efficient scheme for Bayesian inference in cosmology and make available their code.

Kalirai et al. use HST images to measure the proper motion of the globular cluster NGC6397 with respect to the population of background galaxies in the field.

Markevitch & Vihklinin review shocks and cold fronts in the ICM.

Old PS driver

At Andy Beardmore's suggestion put old PS driver back into the distribution available as /OPS, /OVPS, /OCPS, /OVCPS plot types.

Keywords: HEAsoft, pgplot

nsa model in xspec

Slava Zavlin supplied updated versions of the files used by the nsa model. These files are identical to the current versions except that the energy range is extended to 12 keV.

Keywords: HEAsoft, xspec

Preprints

Koester et al. create a catalog of 13,823 clusters of galaxies in the SDSS. The algorithm used is described in another preprint.

Collister et al. use a neural network to generate a photometric redshift catalog of over one million luminous red galaxies from the SDSS. The training set is a 15,000 galaxy spectroscopic catalog from Cannon et al.

Houck & Allen describe models for non-thermal photon emission.

Sato et al. measure temperature and abundance profiles in A1060 using Suzaku.

Done & Nayakshin argue that the AGN soft excess is more likely to be due to absorption in a wind than reflection from a disk since the latter, unlike the former, requires fine tuning of the ionization state.

Temi et al. find extended far IR emission from ellipticals using Spitzer and interpret it as due to cold gas buoyantly transported from a reservoir in the core.

Corasaniti et al. note that a new generation of big telescopes and very high resolution spectrographs will be able to measure the change in redshift in quasar absorption line systems over a ten-year baseline and hence constrain models for the cosmic expansion history.

Blasi et al. review expected gamma-ray emission from clusters of galaxies.

Kocsis et al. provide a Fourier decomposition method of determining the position of SMBH binary inspiral observed using LISA.

Ng argues that if spacetime undergoes quantum fluctuations then an EM wavefront acquires uncertainties in direction which will show up in interferometric observations of distant quasars.

Poole et al. use a suite of simulations to investigate the effects of mergers on cluster parameter relations.

de Plaa et al. use XMM observations of abundances in 22 clusters to test SN models.

Sesana et al. consider the prospects for using LISA observations to constrain models of the build-up of SMBHs.

bug in rbnrmf

Stephane Paltani reports an array overwrite warning message when running rbnrmf on JEM-X response matrix. It turns out to be due to these matrices having a starting channel of 0 for the EBD extension but 1 for the MATRIX extension. This shouldn't be a problem except that rbnrmf was incorrectly using the number from the EBD extension when rebinning the data from the MATRIX extension. Fixed this as version 5.0.1.

Keywords: HEAsoft, Integral

Preprints

Bauer et al. use XMM RGS and EPIC observations to investigate the starburst outflow from NGC253. They use cross-dispersion profiles to map the distribution of prominent ions.

Dimopolous et al. propose various laboratory tests of GR using atom interferometry.

Liddle et al. discusses Bayesian evidence for techniques for dark energy.

Petrosian et al. report on RXTE observations of the "bullet cluster".

Clowe et al. present weak lensing results on the cluster 1E0657-558 which shows that the baryon (X-ray emitting) peak is not at the same position as the dark matter peak.

Wheatley & Kallman note the striking similarity between the X-ray spectra of the symbiotic star CH Cyg and Seyfert II - the soft component in both is due to scattering off a photoionized medium.

Dravina reviews quantum optical effects which may be of interest in astronomy.

Ford & Gregory discuss Bayesian model selection in planet searches.

Coble et al. present results on 28.5 GHz radio sources in 90 cluster fields. They find 9 times more sources in cluster cores than in the outskirts which themselves are 3 times overdense in sources relative to the field.

Barnes et al. present the S2PLOT 3-D graphics library.

Churazov et al. use Earth-occulting INTEGRAL observations to measure the CXB from 5-100 keV. They find results consistent to HEAO-1 but with a 10% higher normalization.

cstat with background files and low counts

There are bugs in both v11 and v12 which prevent correct convergence for some datasets with low counts in both the source and background files. The v11 fix is available as 11.3.2ab and the v12 fix will be available shortly.

However, it appears that the eventual best fit is still biased - this is likely a statistical rather than computational problem. The model seems to be be biased systematically below the data so a possible approach is to add another term which pushes the total number of model and data counts to be the same.


Keywords: HEAsoft, xspec

Preprints

Gruzinov estimates molecular viscosity in the ICM due to magnetic fields and finds a value large enough to noticeably damp turbulence.

von der Linden et al. construct a sample of 625 brights group and cluster galaxies from the SDSS and compare their properties with other ellipticals.

Best et al. use their sample of BCGs to show that BCGs are preferentially radio-loud and consider the consequences for cooling cores.

Pfrommer et al. calculate the effects of cosmic rays on the X-ray luminosity and S-Z decrement of clusters of galaxies.

Mix et al. present a primer on astrobiology.

Gilli et al. detail their latest CXB synthesis.

Scargle et al. discuss the problem of testing quantum gravity with timing data on GRBs.

Liddle reviews approaches to the problem of selecting between competing models.

Takei et al. claim a detection of the WHIM in the direction of X Comae both in absorption using the XMM RGS and emission using EPIC.

Nevaleinen et al. look at XMM observations of 4 clusters with previous claims of soft excesses and conclude that there are still significant calibration problems at low energies in either the MOS or PN (or perhaps) both which make it impossible to conclude whether or not there is a soft excess.

Kallman & Palmeri review atomic data sources of relevance for astronomy.

Preprints

Afshordi et al. stack 193 X-ray emitting clusters to find a 9 sigma detection of the SZ effect in the WMAP 3-year data. They find that 32+/-10% of the baryons are not in the hot ICM.

Cattaneo & Treyssier perform detailed simulations of AGN feedback on cluster ICM and show that after an initial rapid accretion phase a stable solution is reached with a constant small accretion rate.

Hashimoto et al. analyze a sample of Chandra images of clusters using simple statistics to define morphology. They find that distorted and non-distorted clusters occupy different loci in the L-T plane but no correlation between morphology and luminosity or temperature.

Crowder & Cornish present their solution to the "cocktail party" problem of LISA analysis of Galactic binaries using a Blocked Annealing Metropolis-Hastings MCMC.

Riess et al. present new SNIa, 13 of which are at z>1, and conclude that the data are still consistent with w=-1 and rule out dw/dz>>1.

Borkin et al. use medical imaging technology for slicing 3D data cubes in an astronomical context as part of the Harvard AstroMed initiative.

Fusco-Femiano et al. argue that there really is a non-thermal excess from the Coma cluster.

Jonsson et al. calculate the effects of weak lensing on possible attempts to do cosmology useing GW detections of chirping black holes with EM counterparts (hence redshifts).

Nayakshin explains the variability of continuum and constancy of reflection components in AGN by arguing that disk coronal flares are likely to emit anisotropically.

Preprints

McHardy et al. argue on the basis of X-ray variability and optical emission line widths that AGN are just scaled-up galactic binaries in terms of their black hole accretion process.

Schaefer constructs a Hubble diagram from 69 GRBs and argues that it provides an accuracy only a factor of 2 worse than the big SNIa surveys.

Boyarsky et al. note that improved limits on the sterile neutrino can be obtained using a wide-field but low effective area (ie no telescope) calorimeter.

Ravikumar et al. present new redshifts of objects in the CDFS (alias GOODS-South) and note that this field contains anomalous structures containing evolved, massive galaxies.

Barack & Cutler investigate how well LISA observations of EMRIs can test that spacetime around a rotating BH is the Kerr metric.

Wise et al. report on a deep Chandra observation of Hydra A which shows extensive cavities which correlate precisely with 330 MHz emission.

Belczynski et al. argue that the creation of stellar mass BH binaries are suppressed by mergers during the common envelope phase and so these are not likely to be a significant population for advanced LIGO.

Andersson et al. use their new Smoothed Particle Inference technique to derive temperature maps of three clusters observed using XMM.

Preprints

Gogus et al. point out that supposing Compton scattering dilutes the NS rotation signature in LMXBs also predicts a hard tail from upscattering of NS surface soft photons and this is not seen.

In the first of a series of papers Young & Fryer look at the uncertainties in element yields from SN explosion models.

Lin & Mohr survey radio sources in 573 clusters using data from the NVSS and note that as many as 10% of clusters may have 150 GHz fluxes from AGN comparable to the SZ signal.

Kashlinsky et al. extend their P(D) analysis of Spitzer data to the GOODS dataset and find further evidence for extragalactic fluctuations. In another paper they also discuss the nature of the sources.

Finoguenov et al. report on cluster detections in the first 36 pointings of the XMM-COSMOS survey.

Hayashi et al. simulate the cores of galaxy-sized dark matter haloes and find that the ellipticity increases towards the center. This may explain the observed flattening of velocity profiles in LSB galaxies.

Hopman et al. estimate the expected LISA signal from GW bursts caused by stars in close orbits with the Galactic Center BH.

Jetha et al. study 15 groups with Chandra and find no significant differences in gas profiles between those with radio-loud and radio-quiet BCGs.

Begelman & Pringle consider accretion disks with toroidal magnetic fields and find they are thicker than standard disks for the same radius and accretion rate and have a higher color temperature.

kerrbb model

Jeff McClintock writes :

Some users of kerrbb have been freezing the inclination (par3), the mass(par4), and the distance (par6) and then allowing the normalization constant K to vary. This is not correct: with i, M and D fixed, the normalization should be frozen at K = 1. The current instructions for running kerrbb, which we provided to you, are not clear on this point. When it is convenient, please change the last line of the description of kerrbb to read something like the following:

K =normalization. Should be set to 1 if the inclination, mass and distance are frozen.

We have made this change in the v11 and v12 documentation.

Keywords: HEAsoft, xspec

extractor and lightcurve files

The lightcurve file output from extractor did not necessarily include an extension named GTI as required by the standard. Now modified to add such a GTI extension. If there are multiple CCDs and hence gti extensions then individual extensions are still written but a GTI extension is also written containing the merged gtis. v4.72.

Note that this also fixes a bug in xselect when using select intensity on XMM data - the problem was that the new select intensity perl script assumes the presence of an extension called GTI in the lightcurve.

Keywords : HEAsoft, xselect, extractor

onepar bug

The wftbmd.f file in the onepar routine for creating single parameter table models does not initialize the status variable. This can lead to a spurious error message and program exit.

Keywords: HEAsoft, xspec

Simultaneous fitting of source and background

Caroline Kilbourne points out that the new multiple source capability of xspec provides a clearer way of simultaneously fitting the source and the background. Suppose we have a spectrum source.pi which includes our source and some background and another spectrum back.pi which just contains background. These files have responses source.rsp and back.rsp, respectively. We now read these in by

XSPEC12> data 1:1 source.pi 2:2 back.pi
XSPEC12> resp source.rsp back.rsp
XSPEC12> resp 2:1 source.rsp

Now we set up the model for the background as the default model

XSPEC12> model ....

and the model for source as the second model

XSPEC12> model 2:source ....

The default model now has linked parameters across the two datasets while the second model just contributes to the model for source.pi.

Randall Smith suggests it would be nice to be able to fit models to the background which is read in as a background file eg something like

XSPEC12> data source.pi
XSPEC12> back back.pi
XSPEC12> resp source.rsp
XSPEC12> model ....
XSPEC12> model back ....

Note that this would also require us to be able to associate a background response matrix with the background spectrum eg

XSPEC12> resp back back.rsp

Keywords: HEAsoft, xspec

xselect.mdb update for Suzaku

Switched the default WMAP from SKY to DETECTOR and removed the TIME-OBS and TIME-END from the catalog display since these keywords are no longer used in the event file.

Keywords: HEAsoft, xselect, Suzaku

setplot id produces garbage in v11

K.D. Kuntz reported that xspec v11 produces garbage plots when setplot id is used. This was due to a mismatch in string lengths which is fixed in v11.3.2aa.

Keywords: HEAsoft, xspec

extractor bug when event file has 1 event !

Phil Evans and Laurence Tyler report from the Leicester Swift team that extractor core dumps when extracting an event file from multiple inputs if the second file has only 1 event. They tracked the problem to a floating divide by zero due to an uninitialized variable in xclock called from w_events. I fixed this by removing the xclock call because it makes no sense in w_events because we don't know the total number of events which will be written. Fixed in v4.71.

Keywords: HEAsoft, xselect, Swift

extractor and physical coordinates

Added support for ds9 region files in physical coordinates. This is in addition to the options already supported of image, fk4, or fk5 (with the last two either in degrees or hms). v4.70.

Keywords: HEAsoft, extractor

extractor bug when using TIME as a filename filter

Stephen Holland points out that when using the TIME column in a filename filter eg test.evt[TIME=1.2e8:1.3e8] the exposure and gtis are not set correctly. Most people don't do this and it is not used in xselect. This bug is fixed as v4.69.

Keywords: HEAsoft, extractor, xselect

subtle problem in xselect filter intensity

Phil Evans spotted a subtle problem using filter intensity. Extra time is rejected at the start and end of each gti of the lightcurve used as the basis of the intensity filtering. The reason is that the lightcurve assigns a time to the center of the bin and these times are used by maketime to create the filter gtis. We used prefr=postfr=0.5 in maketime so that if bin I does not satisfy the filter and bin I+1 does then the starting time of the gti is (t(I)+t(I+1) )/2, which is correct. However, if the first or last bin of an input gti satisfies the filter then maketime just uses t(I) leading to the loss of half a bin. I've corrected this by writing a perl script called by the filter intensity command which creates a new temporary lightcurve with extra bins before and after each gti (and with rate=0). This temporary lightcurve is used as the input for maketime and ensures that no time is lost. A test is to do a filter intensity with range 0.0-* then extract a new lightcurve. The result has exactly the same gti as the pre-filtered lightcurve.

Keywords: HEAsoft, xselect

faking XMM RGS spectra in xspec v11

Piero Ranelli reports that using the background file produced by the SAS tool rgsbkgmodel in xspec v11 fakeit produces errors. The cause was an array overflow in wrtfak.f because I'd not increased the size to allow for up to 7 columns in the output spectrum. This problem does not occur in v12. Fixed as 11.3.2z.

Keywords: HEAsoft, xspec

xspec v11 inibin and stwght fixes

Backed out the change to inibin which attempted to have the energy range warning write out once per fit at chatter level 10. A bug caused the message to be written every iteration and the basic idea has a flaw anyway. So now back to writing the message every iteration but at chatter level 15. Bug fix 11.3.2x.

For the weight command trapped the case of no datasets read in. Now writes a warning message and returns immediately. This fixes a bug that if the weight command was used before readinga dataset a then subsequent use of the weight command required an explicit dataset number to have any effect. Bug fix 11.3.2y.

Keywords: HEAsoft, xspec

xspec tcl script to run multiple fakeits

A handy new script to run fakeit many times for a given input response, background and model then write the results to a FITS binary table. At the moment the script only works for one input file and just does a fit after each fakeit and stores the resulting parameters. It thus provides a way of testing for bias in the fit statistic. The next step is to allow testing for bias in the production of confidence regions.

Updated 9/16/06 with improved speed and error-checking.

Keywords: HEAsoft, xspec

extractor for events with differing WCS

Giacomo Vianello pointed out a confusion in using extractor (actually extract in xselect) when multiple event files with differing WCS are read. The extracted image has sky coordinates corrected to the same WCS however the extracted event file does not. This means that doing a straight extract image produces a sensible looking image but doing an extract events followed by an extract image produces multiple sources. I've checked in a fix (as v4.68) which corrects this and transforms sky coordinates to the same WCS when extracting events. This is at a slight cost in speed but only for the case when WCS differ.

Keywords: HEAsoft, xselect, extractor

PGPLOT background color

Since I never remember how to make sure the background color is white in PGPLOT and PLT plots here are two ways to do it.

1. setenv PGPLOT_BACKGROUND white
setenv PGPLOT_FOREGROUND black


2. PLT> scr w
which is a quick alias for
PLT> scr 0 1 1 1
PLT> scr 1 0 0 0

Keywords: HEAsoft, PLT, PGPLOT

new xspec models

Added to the new models page Chris Done's model for partially ionized absorber with velocity shear and Laura Brenneman and Chris Reynold's model for the broad Fe K line from the disk around a rotating black hole.

Keywords: HEAsoft, xspec

Preprints

Gott et al. compare the topology of large scale structure observed using the SDSS with cosmological simulations.

Jimenez et al. use SDSS spectra of 22000 early-type galaxies to study ages, metallicities and star formation histories. Large galaxies have older stars and chemical enrichment lasts 1-2 Gyr.

Burenin et al. present the results of their 400 sq deg ROSAT PSPC galaxy cluster survey including 266 optically identified clusters, groups, or individual galaxies.

Law et al. find no evidence to suggest that the morphologically irregular galaxies at z~2-3 are due to galaxy mergers.

Mathews et al. find that the large scatter in Lx/Lopt for elliptical galaxies can be attributed to variations in the dark halo mass.

Agol provides a comprehensive set of relations for the efficiency of finding extrasolar planets i coronagraphic surveys.

Lahav offers an astronomical view on astrostatistics.

Guainazzi & Bianchi present the results of XMM RGS observations of 69 obscured AGN which support the scenario that the soft excess is due to photoionization of circumnuclear gas.

bug fix for diskpbb model

Ken Ebisawa supplied a fix to diskpbb.f. He notes that

  The bug was such that the old normalization was wrong in that it
 was 0.75/p times smaller.  The correct normalization is obtained
 by multiplying 0.75/p to the normalization of the old code. Disk
 radius is proportinal to the square root of the normalization, and p
 can be as low as 0.5, so the correct inner radius may be up to
 1.11 time greater than the radius obtained from the old code.
 Luckily, this would not dramatically change the consequences of the
 papers already published by old diskpbb code (Okajima et al.,
 Vierdayanti et al., and what else?).

Keywords: HEAsoft, xspec

energy compression for rbnrmf

Added to rbnrmf the option to compress RMFs in energy bins either using a single compression factor or a series of factors read from an ascii file.

Keywords: HEAsoft

lorentz model documentation error

Mariano Mendez points out that in the xspec v11 documentation the second parameter is described as the line width (sigma). That should be FWHM. The v12 documentation is more ambiguous but also implies that the line width is sigma. Again, it should be FWHM.

Keywords: HEAsoft, xspec

table model example code

Added twopar - an example program to make an additive table model with two interpolation parameters. Also fixed a couple of potential problems in the wftbmd routine and the onepar program.

Keywords: HEAsoft, xspec

filter time scc

Fixed a bug in the xselect "filter time scc" command which was reported by Phil Evans. In earlier versions of the program the numbers entered if a lightcurve had been extracted were relative to the offset SCC value written in the header of the plot. This behaviour was unintentionally changed in v2.4 to require the absolute SCC number to be entered. The old behaviour has now been restored by editing the routine filter_time_cursor in xsel_utils.f.

Update 10/26/06 : Evert Rol reported that using 'r' as the second option in a time interval gives an error. This would due to a parsing mistake in the str2sec routine.

Keywords: HEAsoft

flx2xsp and wtpha

Created a new version of wtpha - called wtpha3 - which optionally writes multiple spectra in typeII format. Then used this in an upgrade of flx2xsp which can read multiple spectra from the ascii file and write them to a single FITS spectral file. This new option is invoked using the nspec parameter.

Keywords: HEAsoft

Preprints

Sahu et al. use HST observations of a Galactic bulge field to find transiting planets, 5 of which have periods < href="http://arXiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0610115">Muchovej et al. report first results from the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Array of measurements of 3 high redshift clusters. Measured cluster properties are consistent with those determined from X-ray observations.

Belsole et al. present results from Chandra & XMM observations of the environments of 19 radio galaxies at 0.5.

Brenneman & Reynolds use Fe-K line observations with XMM and a new model (kerrdisk) to constrain the black hole spin in MCG-6-30-15.

Ziaeepour & Rosen use the Chandra Multi-Wavelength public data to discuss statistical classification of X-ray sources.

Berti & Cardoso discuss how to distinguish massive BHs from boson stars using LISA observations.

Suzaku mdb change

Updated xselect.mdb because the lststr setting for Suzaku XIS was incorrect for the output from v1 processing. The make obscat command does not work without this change.

Also, updated my brief notes on using xselect for Suzaku analysis.

Keywords: Suzaku, HEAsoft, xselect

Preprints

Ota et al. find no evidence using Suzaku data for bulk motions in the Centaurus cluster in contrast to the claim using Chandra data.

Weisskopf et al. place stringent upper limits on X-ray emission from a single, cool, magnetic WD. They also note a statistical methodology for detecting a source when there are very few counts in the source and background.

Schwope et al. conclude on the basis of deep XMM spectroscopy that one at least of the two absorption lines in the spectrum of the isolated NS RBS1223 must be of atomic origin because their flux ratio is not consistent with a cyclotron origin for both.

Balestra et al. combine the analysis of Chandra observations of 56 clusters to examine the Fe abundance change with redshift finding a decrease parametrized as (1+z)^-1.25.

Cen shows that if gas disk accretion onto a SMBH is only efficient for a surface density > 10g/cm^2 then the SMBH mass - bulge velocity dispersion relation results.

Kondratko et al. report the discovery of 5 more AGN with water masers.

Schmidt & Allen present Chandra observations of 34 massive, dynamically relaxed clusters and find that the NFW model provides an acceptable fit in ~80% of cases.

Jeffery et al. support the proposal that the SNIa 2003fg had a progenitor above the Chandrasekhar limit.

Bogdanovic et al. discuss possible EM signals from close binary SMBH.

Preprints

Tegmark et al. present the cosmological results from the real-space power spectrum based on the SDSS luminous red galaxy survey. Baryon oscillations are clearly detected at a mean z=0.35.

Anderson et al. continue their work cross-correlating RASS sources with the SDSS to generate a large sample of X-ray emitting AGN.

Pratt et al. present temperature profiles from XMM observations of a representative sample of nearby clusters. Outside the core they find similar profiles which agree well with numerical simulations.

Hogan summarizes current ideas on gravitational wave tests for new physics.

Brewer et al. describe a Bayesian MCMC approach to extract stellar oscillation frequencies from light curves.

Elvis et al. describe an active-optics concept for making high resolution mirrors with low mass/unit area.

Poole et al. show the results of SPH simulations of mergers between idealised X-ray clusters. They reproduce the features observed in Chandra and XMM observations and note that neither of the compact cores of the merging clusters are disrupted.

Petric et al. put limits on extragalactic dust from the lack of a halo in a Chandra observation of a z=4.3 quasar.

Albrecht et al. is the report of the dark energy task force.

Wright describes a handy cosmology calculator for times and distances as a function of redshift.

PGPLOT - new ps driver

There were a few problems in the HEAsoft 6 release stemming from the new PS driver we introduced. The QDP font command didn't work correctly, the grfont.dat file was switched from binary to ascii introducing conflicts if the user already had PGPLOT installed, and a new file pgprolog.ps was required also leading to potential conflicts. All these have been fixed in a patch available from the HEAsoft bugs page.

UPDATE: A couple more problems were spotted by Glenn Morris. Symbols didn't work correctly in sub and superscripts and several symbols did not plot. I fixed the sub and superscript problem and at the same time added the ability to deal with multiple levels of sub/superscripts. Some of the symbol problems were due to a typo. Others still remain because there is no equivalent in a PS font for some Hershey symbols. The most important one appears to be the Solar symbol. It may be necessary to handle this one as a special case by writing an "O" then backspacing and shifting vertically and writing a "."

Keywords: HEAsoft, pgplot

Preprints

Hicks et al. report on Chandra and optical observations of the CNOC subsample of EMSS clusters and find excellent agreement between X-ray, dynamical and lensing mass estimates.

Iye et al. find a galaxy at z=6.96 with star formation at ~10 Msun/yr.

Babich & Loeb claim that Thomson scattering off electrons in the outflows from Lyman Break Galaxies could produce CMB fluctuations on arcminute scales comparable to the level of those produced during reionization.

Kramer et al. summarize the results of 2.5 years of observations of the binary pulsar J0737 - these already match the predictions of GR to 0.05% and in future years will supersede the accuracy of Solar System tests.

Ballantyne et al. calculate Spitzer AGN luminosity functions using models of the CXRB and Cloudy.

Han & Zhang compare the windowed FFT and Hilbert-Huang analysis methods for Poisson X-ray data and conclude that the windowed FFT is far superior.

Vierdayanti et al analyze XMM spectra of 4 ULX sources and conclude that they can be explained by super-critical accretion (and hence slim disks) onto stellar mass BHs.

Feldmann et al. present ZEBRA, a Bayesian photometric redshift estimation code.

Hajian et al. describes the Hamiltonian Monte Carlo method applied to cosmological parameter estimation and notes that it offers efficiency advantages over MCMC.

Croston et al. have developed a regularization procedure for deprojecting and PSF-correcting XMM observations of clusters.

Preprints

Koyama et al. present Suzaku XIS observations of the Galactic Center region. Using the observed Fe and Ni emission lines they show that the plasma is collisional and in ionization equilibrium with an Fe abundance ~3.5 times Solar.

Gregory uses a Bayesian Kepler periodogram to find a second planet orbiting HD208487.

Nagai et al. analyze simulated Chandra observations of clusters and conclude that the ISM mass is estimated correctly to better than 6% while the total gravitating mass estimate is biassed low by 5-20% due bulk motion pressure support.

Raymond et al. argue from dynamical simulations that planetary systems with "Hot Jupiters" can harbour Earth-analogs in the habitable zone.

McCarthy et al. compare WMAP3 results with baryon fractions from cluster observations and conclude that Omega_m is probably 0.28-0.39, higher than the WMAP3 best-fit value.

Centrella summarizes recent advances in numerical relativity and the calculations of BH merger gravitational waveforms.

Arzner et al. discuss the efficacy of various statistical methods in spectral fitting and advocate unbinned maximum likelihood.

Angus et al. argue that the "bullet cluster" results comparing X-ray and lensing images can be explained by a combination of MOND and 2eV neutrinos.

Paczynski proposes a number of projects using small (~10-30 cm) telescopes to look for variable objects. He also proposes a small telescope at L1 to give warning of "killer asteroids".

Stroeer et al. discuss automated Bayesian inference for LISA data analysis.

Vignali et al. select type 2 quasars on the basis of [OIII] emission then observe them with Chandra - their results support the idea that type 2 quasars are heavily absorbed in the X-ray.

gti extension names for Suzaku

It appears we have an inconsistency in that the standard name for a gti extension used for suzaku is GTI however xselect is currently set up for STDGTI hence is used cleaned event files from processing. Changed xselect.mdb to to use GTI.

Tested what happens if xselect is used on an input event file with a gti name different from that set in the xselect.mdb. Reading event files with the "wrong" name for the gti extension doesn't seem to be a problem however using "load obscat" then "choose" produces an error message. I need to change the code so these cases are dealt with the same way. Also, shouldn't using DSS keywords get round this issue ?

Update: Modified xsel_read.f and xsel_mission.f so that the read and choose commands will work correctly for either STDGTI or GTI. Note that using DSS keywords doesn't help at present - should xselect be modified to use them ?

Keywords: HEAsoft, xselect, Suzaku

bldg2 printers

To print from the Unix shell under Tiger the printer name needs to include the machine name eg duplex4@lhea4.

Keywords: system

Preprints

Davis et al. describe the multiwavelength extended Groth strip survey with observations from radio to X-ray.

Graham & Driver derive a quadratic relation between BH mass and bulge concentration.

Li Ji et al. develop a non-equilibrium ionization model for stellar cluster winds.

Bridges et al. do a full-up Bayesian analysis of the 3-year WMAP and LSS data and conclude that the n=1 spectrum can be ruled out and that the form of the deviation from n=1 differs from a power-law.

Malbon et al. graft black hole growth onto their galaxy formation model based on LCDM and predict the number and sizes of BH mergers.

xspec11 error in tclout compinfo

Jeremy Sanders points out that the number of parameters in the model returned by tclout compinfo is one too few. Simple error in tclout.c which is patched as 11.3.2v.

Keywords: HEAsoft, xspec

xspec 11 memory allocation errors in fakeit and tclout

Jeremy Sanders provided some fixes to memory allocation of strings in fakeit.c and tclout.c. Some sizes were being set without including the null at the end. Bug fix 11.3.2u.

Keywords: HEAsoft, xspec

Preprints

Bouwens & Illingworth look for z~7-8 galaxies in NICMOS data and find less candidates than expected implying rapid evolution in the most luminous galaxies.

fix to genrsp

Randall spotted that the new v2.0 genrsp was only creating half-gaussian responses. This was due to a stupid error in clcrsp.f. v2.01 should get into the HEAsoft 6.1 release.

Keywords: genrsp, HEAsoft

Preprints

Diehl & Statler present results of analyzing Chandra observations of 54 normal ellipticals. They find little correlation between optical and X-ray emission and conclude that the X-ray emitting gas is generally out of equilibrium and does not retain information about the shape of the underlying potential.

Park et al. develop a Bayesian treatment of hardness ratios.

Wilman et al. present optical integrated field spectroscopy of the H-alpha luminous central galaxies in the four cooling flow clusters and find disturbed emission coincident with secondary galaxies.

Wickham et al. develop the use of reversible jump MCMC to study SMBH binary systems with LISA.

de Freitas Pacheco et al. estimate the capture rate of compact objects by SMBH.

Sanders presents a new technique for performing spatially-resolved spectroscopy by selecting regions based on surface-brightness contours of the smoothed image.

Loeb looks at thermal evaporation from clusters and notes this could lead to a loss of at least a tenth of the gas at the cluster virial temperature.

Schnittman et al. use relativistic MHD simulations of accretion onto a non-rotating BH to predict features of the high-frequency power spectrum.

Trimble et al. present their annual summary of the year in astrophysics.

Heinz et al. find using numerical simulations that radio source morphologies can be significantly changed by bulk flows in the cluster gas.

Beckmann et al. present the 20-40 keV AGN luminosity function based on Integral observations covering 25000 deg^2 and detecting 38 extragalactic objects.

Lauer et al. argue that for brightest cluster galaxies the BH mass correlation with bulge luminosity is more likely to be correct than that with bulge velocity dispersion.

Arun examines the differences in parameter estimation between 3.5PN and 2PN for LISA observations of BH mergers.

Babak et al. present "kludge" gravitational waveforms for compact objects inspiralling around massive black holes.

Preprints

Dotti et al discuss the EM signals or binary BH mergers detectable by LISA.

Maschenko et al. show that random bulk gas motions in primordial galaxies act to flatten the central dark matter cusps and hence solve the discrepancy between the predicted sharp cusps and observed flattened distributions.

Juett et al. present absorption edge results for Ne and Fe using HETG observations of X-ray binaries. They measure the Fe depletion onto dust grains and the Ne ionization structure of the ISM.

Kewley et al. analyze 85224 emission-line galaxies from the SDSS and derive a classification scheme which cleanly separates star-forming galaxies, AGN-HII composites, Seyferts and LINERs.

Cornish & Porter used annealed MCMC to extract the parameters for a SMBH binary embedded in a simulated LISA datastream.

Fregeau et al. discuss the detection probabilities with LISA and LIGO for IMBH binary mergers.

Dai et al. stack RASS data for over 4000 clusters selected from the 2MASS catalog and conclude that the relationships between mass, X-ray temperature, and X-ray luminosity are consistent with those for X-ray selected clusters.

McClintock et al. place a lower limit on the dimensional spin parameter for the BH in GRS1915 of 0.98 by modelling the X-ray continuum.

Schurch & Done model the soft X-ray emission from AGN as a failed disk wind where material is blown off the inner regions of the disk and falls back down onto the outer regions.

Rephaeli et al. analyze > 500 ksec of RXTE data on A2163 and derive a model where ~25 of the 3-50 keV emission is from a non-thermal component.

Sun et al. present a survey of the X-ray coronae of galaxies in nearby clusters.

extractor on OSF

The HEAsoft 6.1 version of extractor fails under OSF with

exception system: exiting due to internal error: out of memory trying to allocate exception system resources

We have no explanation for this at present. It appears to happen before any extractor code is executed.

Keywords: HEAsoft, extractor, OSF

extractor on Intel Mac

Fixed a bug when writing the XRONOS window file which showed up on the Intel Mac although since it was a format statement error we should have run into it before. v4.67.

Keywords: HEAsoft, extractor

xselect.mdb for Suzaku

At Koji's suggestion changed mkf_def_expr to ae*.mkf, since all relevant parameters are now included in the mkf file, and mkf_rel_dir to ../../auxil to conform to the v1 processing output.

Keywords: HEAsoft, xselect, Suzaku

pgplot /gif and /ppm drivers

Created C implementations of the pgplot /gif and /ppm drivers. The fortran versions of these use %VAL so fail on some fortran compilers. Used f2c to create a candidate C version then did a fair amount of tidying up. Confirmed that the drivers work correctly under Tiger but they may need tweaking for other systems.

Update: Added C implementation of pgplot /wd driver. More careful testing showed up a few discrepancies between the output files from the Fortran and C versions. After fixing some bugs the /ppm and /wd drivers produced identical binary output files from the Fortran and C versions. The /gif drivers produced small differences however these output files appear to be time-dependent since both the Fortran and C implementations produce slightly different binary files in successive runs. This was because the CODE array was not completely initialized to zero (one dimension was looped from 0 to 4095 not 0 to 4097 as required).

Keywords : heasoft, pgplot

PostScript driver

Another couple of tweaks to the PS driver to fix bugs. The code included some instances of the
string "\\" which were assumed to be interpreted by the compiler as "\". This doesn't work on all compilers so replaced this with char(92). Also, the prolog was being written with two instances of "%% Orientation", one specifying Landscape and the other Portrait. This was confusing Illustrator on the Mac.

Keywords: HEAsoft, pgplot

more XIS contamination models

After prompting by Aya Kubota I've made a model xiscoabh for the HXD nominal pointing position and xispcoab with an additional parameter giving the off-axis angle. Both these use the expression for column-depth vs off-axis angle from Dotani-san's e-mail.

Keywords: Suzaku

max number of GTIs in extractor

Someone on the Japanese side of the Suzaku team ran into the limit of 40960 rows in a GTI file ! I've increased this to 100,000 but it would be good to remove this limit completely and go to dynamically-allocated memory.

Keywords: HEAsoft, extractor, xselect

rdrmf5 and variable length records

There were two cancelling bugs in rdrmf4 and rdrmf5. The code to find whether a column was variable length had an error so never returned true. However, the attempt to then read all the data for a variable length column in one go is incorrect use of cfitsio, which requires such columns to be read one row at a time. Fixed both these bugs. Note that some tools still call rdrmf4 - these should be updated.

Keywords: HEAsoft

Preprints

Lazendic et al. present results from the analysis of a 70 ksec Chandra HETG observation of Cas A and describe the techniques used on such a large and complex target.

Loewenstein looks at heavy metal creation in field and cluster galaxies and concludes that star formation is >3 times as efficient in clusters as in the field, mitigating the overcooling problem.

Bogdanov et al. propose that the tail in the spectrum of rotation-powered millisecond pulsars is due to Comptonization of the thermal polar cap emission.

Benford models jets and magnetic bubbles to argue that magnetic structures can persist long after the jet has turned off and this explains the bubbles seen in the ICM.

Miller et al. show from X-ray observations of GRO J1655 that the absorbing wind must be driven by magnetic forces internal to the disk.

Blundell et al. determine the low-energy cutoff for the energy of relativistic particles accelerated in radio lobe hot spots.

Krivonos et al. analyze Integral observations of the Galactic Ridge and show that in spectrum and spatial distribution it is consistent with a population of accreting magnetic white dwarf binaries.

Saunders et al. discuss the optimal sampling strategy for searching for periodic signals.

Pizzolato and Soker argue that the R-T instability in radio bubbles in cooling flow clusters is stabilised by the deceleration of the interface in the initial expansion of the bubble increasing the expected lifetime.

Hogan detects the production of gravitational wave bursts by light cosmic strings.

fakeit in v12

Changes to support use of Gaussian statistics when simulating the model part of the source file. If there is a pre-existing dataset then its value of is_Poisson is used when faking. If there is no pre-existing dataset then Poisson statistics are used.

This is required for Swift BAT simulations but also should be useful for other instruments which have non-Poisson statistics.

Keywords: xspec, HEAsoft

PGPLOT PS driver

Made considerable simplification to the GRPSSY routine in psdriv.f. This was very baroque and I was able to reduce the code length by a factor of three and generate cleaner PS. This also fixed a nasty bug in the plot sens command in xspec.

Keywords: HEAsoft, pgplot