JEM-X Monday Meeting 19/11/2007, DNSC Present: SB, CAO, JC, NL, NJW, CBJ 1) Status of JEM-X instruments SB has nothing to report. Gain is very high and temperature has been climbing up to 27 degrees the last few days HV will be stepped down in the next orbit 623, so reaching the end of this high gain period. A potential problem if operational database is not quickly updated - so during emergency switch off/on, it could happen that instrument is switched on again with the old HV value, which would be quite bad. Especially now that MOC is not overstaffed must ensure that the operational dB is updated ASAP. TOO starting in the next orbit for a couple of orbits. 2) SB: Report from IUG meeting last week Integral User Group meeting in ESTEC last Thursday and Friday. No longer ISWT, so this was first meeting with the new format/membership. Wim Hermensen is new chairman. Terms of Reference not settled yet for new setup. Guidelines for the IUG's work must also be updated. Still contains real User Group members as well as Instrument Team (IT) members who function like consultants e.g. on calibration. Previous chairman was Chris Dunne. TAC has also been given a complete overhaul. Wide range of instrument and user representatives were present at meeting. Almost all the people on our workshop organising committee were present. ESA folk included Chris Winkler and Arvind Parmar. Mission status: extended till end of 2012, including rolling extensions (first in 2 years). Chris showed publication profile on which extension depends, which is generally going upward, though somewhat lower than for XMM which has more observations and more sources, by a factor of 3-4. But is due to difference in the nature of the missions. Ground coordination meeting group is becoming something like a sub-committee of the IUG. Some very positive developements for ISGRI whose calibration is improving (spectral snakes problem caused by risetimes). And cross-calibration between SPI and IBIS fit together much better now, without use of normalisation constants.Now doing running calibration of SPI since detector is changing with annealings. Also a discussion about using more time on calibration. e.g. ISGRI needs it. This is needed to be able to use the data right down to the statistical limit. Nomex splotches etc. need better calibration. An action on SPI and IBIS to provide a science-based argument for using several orbits a year on calibration. Cross calibration was discussed in Toulouse, and an action for January for an update on the cross-calibration. We should also produce an improved Crab calibration. Time calibration was also discussed. Wim and colleagues have looked at this problem. Changes seemed to have helped stability of Crab pulsar, though a few outliers remain. New reprocessing of time correlation files has to be done. Jodrell Bank monitor the pulsar regularly, but have to know how the gamma and x-ray pulses relate to the radio pulses. This has to be done very precisely to be able to see millisecond pulsars where data is integrated over several MegaSeconds, especially if the target pulsar is very faint and its period unknown. Also doppler effects have to be taken into account, so it's not a trivial problem. Core Program will end at the end of next year, which should be used to cover the remaining holes in the galactic plane. Russians still get their 23% share of data, also after the end of 2008. What is our strategy for a galactic (i.e. nearby) supernova? Will be a TOO where data are public. Long discussion on procedures, what is a nearby supernova, how it will be processed and results published. Would probably actually be so strong that usual observing procedures would not be used. ITs should be ready to go to Darmstadt at short notice to help with special configuration o f their instruments. Discussion about our Workshop next year. (see below) Generally a productive and amicable meeting. 3) OSA Status Arvind was pleased with a JEM-X spectrum he made from and observation. NJW: has worked on this the last week while NL waits for IMOD updates. NJW updated the archive at DNSC. All this new data should be corrected from COR level using OSA 7.0 to ensure best results (as always). JC has questions about using og_clean at start of this processing to ensure that the new corrected data is used instead of the archived values. SB has made spectra from these new orbits. CBJ: very positive that his results and those from JC's mosaics agreed very well. But is this just luck? NJW: now that we have lots more data and experience we should make that ARF that fits the actual gain of the instrument. We have a tool that can be used as a forestep for NL's image, in conjunction with the new IMOD tables with new information needed for better imaging (.e.g. alignment parameters, parallax offset), some of which has come from CBJ. SPAG table is now read in by imag_iros to account for differences in electronic efficiency and effective pixel size. Goal is to make images that can be mosaicked together, regardless of the FOV, where a source might be at different off-axis angles in different images. NL knocks on table to show his determination. NJW suggests everyone uses his "acro" acronym finding utility to cut through the clutter. CBJ has made a collimator model from first principles, that doesn't include the interplay with the mask. 4) SDAST meeting next week Wednesday and Thursday of next week. Starting Wednesday morning to accomodate ISDC/ESOC people. Possibly must have supper together on Tuesday evening. CAO and CBJ not available on Wednesday evening. We should tell people that we have an OSA version 7.05 of JEM-X software that contains imaging components that use the new IMOD data and utilising a new Instrument Fingerprint Parameter. NJW still to make the agenda. Will circulate it tomorrow. NL will talk about new ima_iros. Science results: JC will present results from a new article. SB suggests a talk on how to introduce gain-dependant things in a simple and thorough way. Stephane should give a clear description of what he wants for image output for the next official OSA release. Should also consider what knock-effect this will have for mosaicking. How should user-defined energy bands (or lack of them) affect production of output using the standard energy bands? How should mosaicking handle the standard energy band output? Should also discuss the joint-analysis cookbook about how to merge JEM-X and SPI data, for naive users. SB has discussed this with Angela Bazzini during thecoordination meeting. She works on ISGRI calibration and so was at the Coordination meeting a couple of weeks ago. 5) Crab Calibration We should look into cross calibration with other instruments. And our own calibration is completely finished. NJW still working on last Crab calibration, but still have to fold in the gain effects, using the new SCP output from the COR level. This should improve the results generally and help us keep a grip on the aging of the instrument. The old ISGRI photon index parameters for the Crab were based on the old risetime data, and now the team says that their results agree better with those of the instruments. JEM-X seems to find a value between 2.00 and 2.07, at the very least below 2.10. We should keep an eye on the cross-calibration forum whose last meeting was in California, and next year's meeting will be in Germany. IUG also has an action to represent INTEGRAL in the forum. ISGRI and SPI are cross- calibrated at 100 keV. 6) Copenhagen 2008 workshop SB: Proceedings will cost a great deal to print. ESA's series is no longer produced and our best offer is from IAP. The European offer was very expensive. PoS (Proceedings of Science) was recommended by Tomaso Belloni at the IUG meeting. Based in Trieste, International School for Advanced Studies. A web-based solution where all can click in and see the papers. Editors of the conference have to do the refereeing procedure, and meeting must be approved as a real, serious meeting. Contributions to a particular meeting are limited to a certain time period, and there are no page limits. Colour figures are not a problem, but of course these shouldn't be in such huge files that they're hard to download. NB. ps2pdf utility works very differently on Unix and Linux machines (w.r.t. size). All this costs nothing. It is a public service ofthe ISAS, but question is how long this will still be up and running. We could make a limited edition book of all the articles to ensure that it's always available somewhere. This service is very good compared to other web-based services where free access is limited to participants for a year, after which each article costs money to download. Perhaps we should promote the service simply to make it the standard that attracts continued financial support. What about copyright? Creative Commons License is one solution (CC), which gives copyright to the authors, not to the publisher. It works a bit like the free software/ open source software licenses. (Richard Stallman and Copyleft etc.). We're now looking at a registration fee of 200 euros, which is quite low, but without supper. Should students pay only 100 euros? We must also remember that Copenhagen is an expensive city for bed and board. Invited speakers: Should also be an invited speaker in each normal session, but this would quickly add a lot of non-paying participants. The invited speakers should be determined very soon, as should the conference fee, which means deciding on the means to publish the proceedings. 7) AOB