XMM-Newton Status Report - May 2004
Operations and archiving
The completion status of the observing programme is as follows: Guaranteed time 99.0 %, AO-1 programme 98.0 %, AO-2 programme 99.6 %, AO-3 programme 30.1 %. Completion of all of the above programmes is expected in March 2005 and in line with the planned start of AO4 observations. Currently, over 3319 observation sequences have been executed and the data for 3105 of these have been shipped.
Version 2.5 of the XSA (XMM-Newton Science Archive) was released on the 5th of March 2004. The new version contains, amongst other things, on-the-fly event list extraction. Version 6.0.0 of the SAS (XMM-Newton data analysis software) was released on the 24th of March 2004. It contains, amongst other things, the possibility to extract and analyze OM grism observations and a range of refinements in system characterization.
Several Targets-of-Opportunity (ToO) and discretionary time targets were observed: Her X-1 (in low state), XTE J1810-197, GRB040223, GRB040106, IRAS 05436-0007, PSR J0737-3039. Both GRB observations were triggered by Integral and observations began 4.9 and 5.2 hours after the burst occurred. These are the fastest responses to date. But it should be noted that such fast response times reflect exceptional convergence of favorable circumstances.
Science highlights
A&A published an article written by B. Aschenbach et al., where they determine the mass and angular momentum of the central super-massive black hole in the centre of our Galaxy based on frequencies found in XMM-Newton, Chandra and infrared data. The authors determine the mass and angular momentum with an error of only 5.7% and 0.5%, respectively. If the measurements can be confirmed independently then this is the first measurement, which cannot be described with the weak-field or post-Newtonian approximation of the General Theory of Relativity.
Some 541 papers have been published in the refereed literature, either directly or indirectly based on XMM-Newton observations.