Science Tools Working Group
We did not meet this week. The next meeting will likely occur June 14.
DC2 Fallout
DC2 was a huge success (as expected). Participants made extensive use of virtually all of the ScienceTools and provided much feed backfor developers to chew on.
Databases and related utilities.
No news.
Likelihood analysis.
JC met with Chris Shrader, Dave Davis, David Band, James Peachey and Analia Cillis to chart the course for developmentof the Likelihood tools in the coming months. Most of the proposed enhancements are in response to user requests that arose during DC2. Highlights include integrating of a plotting option in gtlikelihood, access to model flux values from gtlikelihood, more robust error calculations, confidence contours for fit parameters, and a generating a warning if the spectral model does not fit the data well (but not providing a goodness-of-fit measure). Analia Cillis will be helping out in the implementation of some of these features.
GRB tools.
No news.
Pulsar tools.
From the GSSC weekly report: "Masa Hirayama and James Peachey worked on the infrastructure of the pulsar analysis tools, in order to enhance users' convenience, including automated time conversions between time systems."
Observation simulation.
No news.
User interface and infrastructure.
James Peachey reports that the replacement for PIL, called APE, is finished, having been included in a recent HEADAS release, but he must update the hoops interface before we can use it with our software.
Source Catalog.
The catalog group met yesterday. Topics included a recap of the DC2 presentations, a scheme for comparing image-based source detection methods, generating a reference list of sources used for DC2, including appropriate spectral models, and a presentation by Larry Wai on detecting extended sources at the 5-sigma level.