XMM-Newton Science Analysis Software

If you prefer to access all the information through a comprehensive table, please go to it.

Current version :	7.1.2	Release date :	14th February 2008

The Science Analysis Software (SAS) is an extensive suite of software tools developed to process the data collected by the XMM-Newton Observatory.

SAS is released periodically. With each release, new software developments and bug fixes are included with the aim to improve the processing of XMM-Newton data.

Within these pages you may find all the information needed to download, install and start using SAS. To proceed, click on the specific navigation link as shown on top of this page.

Before you start surfing through them, you may want to have a look at a very concise SAS description.

News

• [14/02/2008] SAS 7.1.2 on Mac OS X Intel: Thanks to the Rosetta translator by Apple which allows non-native binaries built on Mac OS X PowerPC processors to run unchanged on Intel (and with the help of a knowledgeable user), we can announce now that the SAS 7.1.2 binaries for Mac OS X built on a PowerPC system can run unchanged on any Mac OS X Intel. Please look here for a complete description on how to install the new single SAS 7.1.2 tgz archive on a Mac OS X Intel machine.
• [14/02/2008] SAS 7.1.2:
  • After the release of the general patch to SAS 7.1.0, many users have requested to identify it with a new version number. We have assigned it the version number 7.1.2. Please look here for a short justification on such 7.1.2 version number.
  • Simultaneously, the large number of tasks being patched led to a messy and prone to error installation process. Therefore, we have simplified it by providing a single downloadable tgz archive for each supported operating system. Bundled within that file it is included now a shell script named install.sh which installs all SAS release components, including possible patches. Please look here for detailed instructions on how to install the SAS from now on. The section concerning the SAS installation process has been updated accordingly.
• [30/11/2007] Mac OS X epicproc-patch-2.9.18.tgz patch broken: The Mac OS X epproc binary as distributed in the epicproc-patch-2.9.18.tgz patch package, crashes on both Tiger(8.10.0) and Panther(7.9.0). We have replaced the broken epicproc-patch-2.9.18.tgz package with a fixed one for both, first SAS 7.1.0 downloads and those who have downloaded it already.

  To get the fixed package, please download again this package only from the respective subdirectory here, and install it again.

• [28/11/2007] General Patch to SAS 7.1.0 : SAS 7.1.0 is able to recognize and process correctly RGS data taken in single readout node sub-mode. RGS2 is operated in this sub-mode since 17/08/2007 due to H/W reasons. The changes applied to rgsframes, included in SAS 7.1.0, worked well except for an anomalous case of duplicated events, present in the RGS raw data with low but finite probability. rgsframes had to be updated for coping with this case also by single readout node data, and hence the patched version.

  We take the opportunity of having to patch SAS 7.1.0 and include some other changes. The most important one is the change of a default in the EPIC data processing. The temperature-dependent gain correction has been switched on by default within this patch (see CAL-SNR-0223-1.0). The tasks epproc,epchain and epevents all have the parameter withtempcorrection=yes set by default. The correction is mainly useful for EPIC-pn observations which have a non-nominal temperature for the quadrant box electronics. This occurs rarely, for example when the RGS is switched off.

  NB: This correction uses the CCF file EPN_CTI_0016.CCF or later. Running the software with an earlier version of this CCF file will produce an empty event file ! So please check that you have updated your CCF directory accordingly !

  The correction may be turned off by setting withtempcorrection=no on the command-line.

  The full list of tasks included in this patch is:addattribute-2.1, arfgen-1.73.3, backscale-1.3.3, caloalutils-1.104.2, eexpmap-4.2, epchain-8.60.1, epevents-6.42.2, epicproc-2.9.18, epreject-5.9.1, omgrism-1.18.3, rgsframes-3.17.2, rgsproc-1.26.2.

  A closer description about what has been fixed and/or changed on each patched package can be found here.

  This patch includes eexpmap-4.2 and supersedes therefore the patch released on 03/08/2007

  Instructions on how to download and install this patch are given here.

• [03/09/2007] Slew Data Processing Software version 2.1 (replacing V 2.0)
• [03/08/2007] eexpmap-4.2 patch available: Several users reported about a fatal error in the eexpmap-4.1 included in SAS 7.1.0, causing the fatal failure of some metatasks, e.g. edetect_chain. The error was due to a bug in the code that has been fixed in a new version 4.2 of eexpmap. The eexpmap-4.2 patch can be downloaded now as part of the general patch to SAS 7.1.0. Please look at the latest news (28/11/2007) above.
• [17/07/2007] SAS 7.1.0 on Windows: After the great success of SAS 7.0.0 on Microsoft Windows, we provide again a new version of SAS based on the well tested technology of a Virtual machine. Full details available here. It has been tested only in Microsoft Windows XP, not in Vista.
• [16/07/2007] Mac OS X libextra package broken: The libextra tar.gz archives for both supported versions of Mac OS X, 10.3.9 (Panther) and 10.4.10 (Tiger), was broken. This has been fixed, so first downloads of SAS 7.1.0 will take the proper file from now on. For those who have already downloaded that archive, please proceed to here to download it again without having to repeat the download questionaire.
• [16/07/2007] Missing packages: Three packages were missing from public distribution: edetect_chain, rgslccorr and the library libedetect_gen (belonging to emldetect). Full details on how to download and install these missing packages can be found in here, for both, first and non first installs of SAS 7.1.0.
• [10/07/2007] SAS 7.1.0 binaries released

Credits