Science Tools Working Group
The current release of the Science Tools is still v9r15p5, although a new release is anticipated in the foreseeable future. A subset of the next release will be the basis of the next public release of the Science Tools by the FSSC, probably sometime in December after a now-standard testing cycle at the FSSC. This was discussed in an FSSC-LAT team teleconference last week (D Davis, C Shrader, E Winter, J Chiang, S Digel).
The timing for the new public release is constrained by the Cycle 3 proposal deadline, which will be in February, and the desire to have the next release well before the due date. Some features have been requested by users of the public versions of the tools, like allowing the HEASARC 'INDEF' parameter as a response to prompts in Science Tools and having the tools able to tell if obssim and likelihood XML model definitions are being mixed up. (INDEF tells the tool to read the prompted parameter, like ROI center, from the header of the FT1 file.) The FSSC also would like to include the PyLikelihood upper limits functionality that is already in v9r15p5, and to make ModelEditor work on the Mac.
Eric W. reports that the Mac binary distribution at the FSSC (a large subset of v9r15p2) works without changes under the Snow Leopard version of Mac OS X.
Data products: No new news.
Databases and related utilities
No news
Likelihood analysis
No news
GRB tools
No news
Pulsar tools
From Masa: "Nothing special in the pulsar tools development. I am currently working on minor improvements on the pulsar tools"
Observation simulation
Josh Lande has modified the definition of the GaussianSource source. In the new version (in HEAD builds but not yet in a release) the major and minor axis parameters will be assumed to be 1-sigma after the other axis is integrated over. Josh will update the documentation with Chuck accordingly. The change does not affect the functionality, just the meanings of the size parameters.
User interface and infrastructure (& utilities)
No news
Source Catalog
The 11-month source list and the development of the year-1 catalog continue to be the focus.