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XMM-Newton Status Report - May 2004

XMM-Newton Status Report - May 2004

Mission StatusXMM-Newton operations continue to run smoothly. The spring 2004 eclipse season went by without any problems. A problem with the elevation drive of the Kourou antenna was experienced on 22 April 2004; this required the temporary use of the Santiago ground station until the Kourou problem was fixed. The upgrade of the XMM-Newton ground segment to SCOS-2000 is progressing on schedule.

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.

Last Update: 1 September 2019
28-Mar-2024 20:39 UT

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