Subject: ISDC consortium meeting

Hello, here is a short report on the
ISDC Consortium Meeting #30, April 15/16, 2004

1) TC: ISDC News
       People +George (Jake) Wendt (pipelines)
              + Piotr Lubinski (IBIS s/w)
              + Daniel Rychzik (system manager)
              + Simona Soldi (PhD student)
              + Ingo Kreykenbohm (SPI postdoc, binaries)
              + Andrej Neronov (postdoc, user support)
              + Filip Munz (NAG replacements)
              - F. Hroch, Aymeric Sauvageon, David Landriu
              - (in the summer) Ken Ebisawa, Damien Texier
       In the middle of 6 months leave. Was impressed by ESO's VLT work
       where the data quality is actively checked all the time.
2) AP: INTEGRAL status
       - Operations run smoothly
       - Solar panels degrade (in particular during fall 2003); no worry
       - 4th SPI annealing June 2004
       - ISOC will move to Vilspa that will become "European Space
              Astronomy Centre"
       Obs program:
       - Input from Instr. Teams to mission perf. report June 7, 2004
       - AO3 core program must be fixed July 5, 2004
       - AO3 open Sept 13 - Oct 29, 2004
       - AO3 observations Feb 18, 2005 - Aug 27, 2006 (18 months)
3) PK: OSA4 preparations
       - OSA4 freeze BEGINNING OF MAY 2004 !
       - Release planned in July 2004
       - User manuals must be updated
   RW: NAG questions. ISDC tries to find substitutions for NAG
       - no new NAG routines will be allowed in future SW
   NP: IBIS
       - Light curve problems. Tübingen people are investigating
       - NP has made an ISGRI lightcurve extraction tool
   AG: IBIS/ISGRI software
       - various problems with "snake" in spectra, silver in the glue,
         Nomex (material in honeycomb),
   LF (Luigi Foschini): IBIS/PICsIT software
       - No single-ScW images, rely on dithering
   IK (Ingo Kreykenbohm): SPI
       - Detector #2 is lost (new response needed since more inactive material)
       - SPIROS 6 is up and running with important improvements
       - scripts can choose between standard and Toulouse s/w
   NJW: JEMX and OSA4
       - New spectral extraction with better use of PIF
       - New imaging (j_ima_fine_resol)
       - Update of IMOD and RMF IC files
       
       JEMX was criticized for unreliable spectra and flux values
   
   AD: OMC
       - Improvements on detection of extended sources
       - Improved accuracy in crowded fields
       
4) Reprocessing preparations

   RW: Why: to make an accessible science archive for general users.
            Avoid unnecessary steps such as basic corrections.
       What: Provide imaging data (JEM-X and IBIS), also for virtual
             observatory
             Provide spectra and lightcurves from all instruments
       When: Preparations should start as soon as possible since the
             capacity of ISDC is declining
5) Archive and data distribution

   KP (Katja Pottschmidt): Several sensible improvements for the archive.
       The data distribution suffered from difficulties with repeated
       requests (from PI and CoIs). Will be solved with script (username+
       password) to download directly from archive in stead of copying
       to ftp area first.

6) Helpdesk

   PF (Pascal Favre): About one question every other day. 90% from Europe.
   
7) Discussion on support to ISDC from the countries.

   TC: The number of operators will go down to 3 (only one in week-ends)
   
   Most countries maintain their support; ISDC will continue to exist
   but its activites must be downscaled.

8) MOC data delivery
    
   SS (Simon Shaw): There are small problems but the data delivery to ISDC
      is within specifications.
      Handling of CDs (with consolidated data) has improved.

9) IBAS

   SM (Sandro Mereghetti): 11 GRBs in FOV but no one in JEMX FOV
     - 90% position error radius is 2.5 arcmin (10 sigma detection)
     - Need 100 counts for position determination
     - No short duration GRBs have been seen (but bursts from e.g. SGR1806)

10) Andy Strong: Point sources in GC
    91 seen (54 identified, 11 unknown, 26 new sources)
    Level of diffuse flux is 10% relative to total in GCDE
    
11) Albert Domingo: OMC archive
    OMC archive demonstration: With username and passwork you can retrieve
    lighcurves based on search by object ID, category or magnitude.
    (sdc.laeff.esa.es)
    
12) Roland Walter: ISGRI survey
    ISGRI source catalog will be published in Ap.J.
       123 sources, 51 LMXB, 22 HMXB, 5 AGN, 13 various, 32 not identified
    Follow up on unidentified sources by XMM, Chandra, NTT etc.
    Particular interest in Norma Arm sources
    (The Norma Arm has the advantage of being partially covered by the GCDE)
    
13) Ken Ebisawa: Fast pulsar study
    It is possible to search for fast pulsar with s/w tools that already
    exist, such as: xselect, barycent, efsearch, efold, fcopy
    
14) Ada Paizis: LMXB monitoring
    72 sources; multiwavelength campaigns are organized (KE has made
    tool to dig into ISOC planning files for observation dates).
    
15) Peter Kretschmar: Spectral analysis of Vela X-1
    Line feature at 53 keV broader than instrument resolution.
    
16) Rüdiger Staubert: Temporal behavior of Vela X-1
    Due to the long uninterrupted observation interesting short eruptions
    have been found. Pulsations remain during outbursts.
    
17) Ingo Kreykenbohm: GX 301-2 (NS comes very close to the supergiant star)
    ISGRI observations (outside JEMX FOV except for two ScWs)
    
18) Simon Shaw: Pulsar 1259-63, 47.7 ms radio pulsar (NS + Be star)
    TeV detection by HESS telescopes, but only upper limit by INTEGRAL
    

Next meeting: September 21-22, 2004 in ISDC

/NJ
    
       
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Niels J. Westergaard
Danish Space Research Institute
Juliane Maries Vej 30, DK 2100 Copenhagen O
Phone: +45 35 32 57 05; FAX:  +45 35 36 24 75