XMM-Newton
Science Analysis System: Users' Guide
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4.12.2 Example of EPIC product generation: images, spectra &
light curves
The following example illustrates a simple analysis session which aims
to extract an image, spectrum and light curve of a point source within the
field of view of a single EPIC camera.
We assume that a calibrated EPIC event list (either from the pipeline
processing or from running the EPIC chain tasks) is present in the working
directory and that the setup steps (cifbuild, odfingest and
the definition of the SAS environment variables, see § 4.12.1)
already were performed.
The following analysis steps are described:
- Create light curves to check for times of background flares.
- Filter the EPIC event list to exclude bad events and periods of high
background.
- Create images of the EPIC data.
- Extract source and background spectra for a bright point-like field
source.
- Create RMF and ARF files for this source.
- Alternatively, make use of the especget meta-task to perform
spectral analysis steps 4 and 5 in one go.
- Prepare the spectra for further analysis with Xspec.
- Create a light curve for the source.
Commands to analyse the spectrum using Xspec and the light curve using
Xronos are beyond the scope of this document. Please, check the manuals
of these program packages and the SOC provided SAS data analysis threads
(available from the SAS web page) for further info.
Subsections
Next: 4.12.2.1 Working from the command line
Up: 4.12 Processing examples of EPIC data
Previous: 4.12.1 Example of calibrated events files creation
European Space Agency - XMM-Newton Science Operations Centre