XMM-Newton Users Handbook

6.1.2 The Science Analysis Software (SAS)

The Science Analysis Software (SAS) is the software package to reduce and analyse the XMM-Newton science data. It broadly consists of two main blocks:

• reduction pipelines, which apply the calibrations to the ODF/SDF science files, and produce calibrated and concatenated event lists (for the X-ray cameras) and flat-fielded and calibrated OM sky images, source lists and time series.

• a set of file manipulation tools. Such tools allow also the extraction of spectra, light curves, (pseudo-)images and the generation of source lists, as well as the generation of the appropriate instrument response matrices.

The user is referred to the SAS Users Guide for a general description of the SAS, as well as to the on-line available SAS Documentation.

The SOC is maintaining a SAS Scientific Validation page which contains results of the scientific validation of the currently available SAS version. It reflects therefore the data reduction and analysis software state-of-the-art, and provides additional and frequently updated information on the accuracy of the XMM-Newton calibrations.