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Minutes of HEASARC Users Group Meeting
February 14, 2003
1. Agenda
Time Topic Speaker Duration
8:30 AM Continental Breakfast Available
9:00 AM Introductions All 0:10
9:10 AM HEASARC overview Marshall 0:30
9:40 AM EPO Activities Lochner 0:15
9:55 AM Web and archive plans McGlynn 0:25
0:20 AM HEASOFT and other software plans Pence 0:25
0:45 AM Break 0:15
1:00 AM ADEC and ADEC White Paper McGlynn 1:00
2:00 PM Lunch: Beyond Einstein Briefing 1:00
Current Missions
1:00 PM Chandra Rots 0:15
1:15 PM HETE2 Corcoran 0:05
1:20 PM XMM Snowden 0:15
1:35 PM XTE Boyd 0:10
1:45 PM Integral/CGRO Shrader 0:20
2:05 PM Break 0:10
New Missions
2:15 PM GLAST Band 0:25
2:40 PM Astro-E2 Mukai 0:15
2:55 PM Swift (BeppoSAX) Angelini 0:25
3:20 PM New Missions and the HEASARC Angelini/Band/McGlyn 0:15
3:35 PM Break 0:15
3:50 PM Discussion 0:30
4:20 PM New members/Executive session Harrison 0:30
4:50 PM Feedback Harrison 0:15
5:05 PM Close
2. Summary
The User Group heard reports on an impressive array of missions and
their associated archives, as well as on a number of general outreach
and software development efforts. The HUG was impressed by the
dedication of the HEASARC staff, and the continued progress in spite
of limited resources. The HEASARC in large part addressed the
recommendations from the previous meeting, and continues to value and
respond to community input. The HUG was also pleased to see that the
Astro-E2, Swift and Glast archive plans were progressing. In
particular the adoption of HEADAS by Swift and Astro E2 is an
encouraging sign that future missions are moving toward
standardization.
Particularly impressive was the summary of EPO activities, especially
the progress made by Imagine the Universe! This site appears to be
reaching a large audience, and has an array of inventive activities
and materials targeted at the high school level.
A significant portion of the meeting was devoted to the ADEC
whitepaper, and NASA's role in the NVO. Although NASA manages the
most-used astronomical archives, NASA has no well-defined role in
NVO. The ADEC, the council of NASA's astronomy archive centers, is
writing a whitepaper to propose for NASA support of interoperability
efforts. We reviewed two versions of the whitepaper, one drafted by
Tom McGlynn proposing an approach to interoperability among NASA data
centers based on NASA Interoperability Layer Elements (NILE), and one
based on an object Master Directory, drafted by Barry Madore.
Written opinions from HUG members were collected a few days after the
meeting, and were forwarded to Tom as input to his draft. Section 3
(Recommendation) summarizes the recommendations, to the extent that
there was consensus.
3. Recommendations
1. HETE-2. The HUG noted that there has been little progress making
HETE data products available in standard FITS format accessible using
software familiar to the community. For GRBS, multicolor lightcurves
are available in FITS, and this is probably sufficient. However, for
the coded mask data, potentially useful for monitoring bright
Galactic sources, there is no standard format or documented software.
The HUG appreciates that the HETE2 team has no funding to support
such development activities, and the HEASARC does not have personnel
to dedicate to the task. If the HETE2 team and HEASARC cannot get
additional funding for this task, the HUG urges the HEASARC to
consider some intermediate solution where processed lightcurves
and/or spectra for selected sources could be archived in FITS.
2. Software: XSPEC. The HUG was concerned that plans to rewrite
XSPEC in C++ may have the effect of destandardizing the package,
since not every institution supports C++, and there may be
portability issues. This may have already progressed past the point
where it is sensible to reconsider, however in the future the HUG
felt it would be good to get feedback from the community before
rewriting core software packages.
3. HERA: HUG was interested in progress on this new data analysis
service to provide interactive analysis over the internet of data
products retrieved from the HEASARC data archive. The HUG felt that
HERA might be better tested (and more immediately useful to the
community) on XMM rather than XTE. HERA's primary target is the
novice user, and more people in this category are likely to want to
access imaging data rather than timing data. Integral might be
another good choice, since there is not already a community familiar
with Integral data analysis.
4. XMM: The HUG recommends HEASARC consider some development
activity to 'ease the pain' involved with XMM analysis. In
particular user friendly scripts on top of SAS would be very useful
to the user community.
5. Glast: The HUG was quite concerned that Glast appeared to be
developing custom software for the LAT without input/consultation
with HEASARC or the general user community. The HUG would recommend
pressuring the Glast team to conform to the extent possible with
standard formats, interfaces and procedures, and pay attention to
portability of the analysis system to multiple platforms. The HUG
hopes that Glast data and analysis tools will be easier to access and
apply than for example those that were available for Egret or Comptel.
6. Swift. The HUG was intrigued by the multiwavelength database
being developed for Swift. The purpose of this database is to enable
groundbased observers to upload their GRB observations to the
archive. The HUG cautions that it may be very difficult to
standardize and verify the data products. In addition, this activity
sounds more appropriate as a Swift mission effort (funded by that
project) rather than a HEASARC effort.
7. NVO/ADEC white papers: Five individual HUG members sent
suggestions on the ADEC whitepaper to Tom McGlynn prior to Feb. 28.
Although on some issues there was no clear consensus, in general the
HUG felt that
a. It is important that NASA participate in NVO, and it would be a
very worthwhile investment that would enable new kinds of science
investigations.
b. Something like NILE is an appropriate solution in the short term,
however in the longer term a master object directory, or something
similar, would be very valuable.
c. Whatever is done should not be limited just to NASA data. NASA
efforts shouldn't be boxed in, and should collaborate with other NVO
teams.
d. The NASA effort should address resource discovery as well as
linking of data.
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