XMM-Newton Science Analysis System


eimsim (eimsim-2.3) [xmmsas_20160201_1833-15.0.0]

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Quick cookbook

For a minimum-fuss run of the simulation code, do as follows:

1. Create a subdirectory `product' off your present working directory (PWD).

2. Put into this directory the following files:
   • A Calibration Index File (CIF);
   • An attitude history file;
   • calibrated event lists for one or more EPIC instruments;
   • for each of the instruments for which you have supplied an event list, vignetted exposure maps in 5 energy bands.

   These files are expected to have the standard XMM-SSC product filenames. Examples for EPIC MOS1 are as follows:

   	P0123456789OBX000CALIND0000.FIT
   	P0123456789OBX000ATTTSR0000.FIT
   	P0123456789M1S002MIEVLI0000.FIT
   	P0123456789M1S002EXPMAP1000.FIT
   	P0123456789M1S002EXPMAP2000.FIT
   	P0123456789M1S002EXPMAP3000.FIT
   	P0123456789M1S002EXPMAP4000.FIT
   	P0123456789M1S002EXPMAP5000.FIT
   

   Note that all these files are used merely as templates - that is, the only parts of them which are used by eimsim are those parts which give information about image exposure, plus the pixel grid location (from the WCS keywords) and dimensions. No data values are used which depend on real, observed x-ray events.

3. Set the SAS_CCFPATH environment variable to the location of a CCF set which you know to be valid for the version of the SAS which you are running.

4. Copy the source template dataset srcspec_1xmm.fits (or srcspec_2xmm.fits) from the directory $SAS_DIR/lib/data/eimsimdata/ to your PWD and rename it `srcspec.fits'.

5. Run in succession the following commands:

           eimsimprep
           eimsimbatch
           eimsimreduce
   

The files produced are described in the `Output Files' sections in the documentation for these three tasks. Expect the middle script to take on the order of 10 minutes to run (the 1st and 3rd should be much quicker). If you want to understand exactly what these commands have done you will have to find out what the default values of all parameters were set to, either by looking in the $<$command$>$.par file or doing `$<$command$>$ -h' or `$<$command$>$ -d'.