Science Tools Working Group
The current release of the Science Tools remains v9r11.
Data products: Reprocessing for Pass 7 is still getting into gear; yesterday Richard forecast one more week for all of the aspects to be finalized.
Databases and related utilities
No news
Likelihood analysis
From Jim:
- I implemented the "efficiency factor" that accounts for the trigger rate and energy dependent effects of ghost events on the effective area. The implementation is based on the parameterization of the trigger rate as a function of livetime fraction and of the linear fits to the relative efficiency as a function of trigger rate for different energy bands as described on slides 1 and 29 of David Paneque's presentation to C&A on April 20.
The code reads in a text file that contains the required six parameters. Currently, the location of that file is specified by an environment variable, EFFICIENCY_PAR_FILE, but eventually, this information would probably be added as an extension in the effective area FITS files in CALDB.
- I tested and updated the new P6_V[345] IRFs that Riccardo provided after having fixed the energy dispersion bug he reported at C&A last Thursday. It is in irfs/caldb v0r9p1.
Using the efficiency factor information will require another extension to the tabulation of accumulated livetimes in gtltcube, to include tabulation of livetime-weighted deadtime fractions. David and Eric's studies indicate that residual backgrounds (which to first order increase with deadtime fraction and so counter the efficiency factors) may also be an important consideration in applying efficiency factors to analyses of diffuse emission.
GRB tools
No news
Pulsar tools
From Masa: "Finally the example files in the pulsar tools tutorials were replaced (both at FSSC and at SLAC). I've been working on minor bugs and issues in the pulsar tools, hoping to fix them before the upcoming data release."
Observation simulation
(Carry over from last week) The bug that Masa reported a bug in how the DATE-OBS keyword is still open. Most likely you will not notice unless you are trying to run the pulsar tools on simulated data.
User interface and infrastructure (& utilities)
(Carry over from last week) In Science Tools v9r11 gtexpcube has a default parameter file that has hardwired inputs and does not prompt the user for inputs. This is in JIRA. As a workaround you could replace your system copy of gtexpcube.par with the same file from an earlier release; entering all of the parameters on the command line won't help.
Source Catalog
Last week the primary topic was revisions to the Bright Source List paper in response to the referee's report.
Science Tools Working Group
The current release of the Science Tools remains v9r11. The forecast is still for a new release in the near future. As mentioned last week, among other things it will have P6_V4 and P6_V5 response functions that have been implemented by Riccardo.
LATE-BREAKING NEWS: Riccardo has found a small bug in how the energy dispersions are handled in the Pass 6 IRFs.
Data products: Reprocessing for Pass 7 is still getting into gear. The FT2 reprocessing task (to add some new columns has been defined for the pipeline.
Databases and related utilities
No news
Likelihood analysis
Jim is investigating potential modifications to the calculation of diffuse responses to take into account the energy dispersion; Jean has demonstrated (in his studies for the Spectral Analysis Group) that at low energies this may be worthwhile for accuracy.
GRB tools
No news
Pulsar tools
Masa reports that he is updating the user documentation for the pulsar tools; working on example files.
Observation simulation
The bug that Masa reported a bug in how the DATE-OBS keyword is still open. Most likely you will not notice unless you are trying to run the pulsar tools on simulated data.
User interface and infrastructure (& utilities)
In Science Tools v9r11 gtexpcube has a default parameter file that has hardwired inputs and does not prompt the user for inputs. This is in JIRA. As a workaround you could replace your system copy of gtexpcube.par with the same file from an earlier release; entering all of the parameters on the command line won't help.
Source Catalog
Last week Jean presented an investigation of the effect of the energy spacing of exposure maps on the results from likelihood analysis. Updates to the Bright Source List paper to respond to the referee's comments were also discussed.
Science Tools Working Group
The current release of the Science Tools remains v9r11. A new release may be coming this week. Among other things it will have P6_V4 and P6_V5 response functions that have been implemented by Riccardo. Jim reports that he has added them to irs/caldb v0r9. These new IRFs include azimuthal variation of the effective area and have the new (i.e., correct) implementation of the LPM effect. v4 was generated from an allGamma run without overlaid ghost events and v5
Data products: Reprocessing for Pass 7 is starting, sort of. Warren is working on the FT2 regeneration, which adds a few columns. The plan for event class designations is still converging, but doesn't have much time left to do it in.
Databases and related utilities
No news
Likelihood analysis
Jim reports: "There is a bug in the NewMinuit optimizer class that arises from an interface change to the Minuit2 library in ROOT v5.20 (this was discussed at last week's Software meeting). Pat is working on a fix." I'm afraid that I don't know any more details yet.
GRB tools
No news
Pulsar tools
No news (I asked late).
Observation simulation
Masa reported a bug in how the DATE-OBS keyword is set and another bug (now fixed) in how the TIMREF value is set in simulations. Most likely you will not notice unless you are trying to run the pulsar tools on simulated data.
User interface and infrastructure (& utilities)
No news
Source Catalog
Last some of the discussion was about refinements - needed and in progress - for the diffuse emission model. Jean also had a brief update about his investigation of th effect of adjusting convergence tolerance settings in likelihood (including gtfindsrc) analyses.
Science Tools Working Group
The current release of the Science Tools remains v9r11.
Data products: Reprocessing is still in planning. The test LS1 file passed scrutiny at the FSSC. The plan for event class designations that Nicola presented yesterday at the C&A meeting includes having a new variable Ft1EventClass in the Merit files; this would map directly into EVENT_CLASS at the FT1 level, possibly removing the need for (or greatly simplifying) the event classifier script that makeFT1 currrently uses to generate classifications.
Databases and related utilities
No news
Likelihood analysis
No news. The LATEST builds indicate that Jim has been working on handling phi-dependent IRFs in likelihood analysis. This work in progress is not in HEAD or release versions.
GRB tools
No news
Pulsar tools
From Masa: "Nothing special in the pulsar tools development. Right now I am
trying to replace example data files in the pulsar tools tutorials."
Observation simulation
No news
User interface and infrastructure (& utilities)
No news
Source Catalog
Last week most of the discussion again was related to the effects of changing convergence tolerance specifications in likelihood analysis; Toby gave an update on evaluating error ellipses (vs. error circles) using pointfit; he presented a new estimate for the effective width of the high-energy PSF.