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Session 91 - Working Group on Astronomical Software.
Oral session, Wednesday, January 17
Salon del Rey North, Hilton
The All Sky Monitor (ASM) aboard the X-ray Timing Explorer (XTE) provides a history of both long term and short term behavior of \sim 100 x-ray sources and transients. The ASM consists of three Scanning Shadow Cameras which are positioned to cover 83 % of the sky each time the instrument rotates by 360 degrees. The ASM scans the sky every 90 minutes using successive dwells at a fixed instrument position, with each dwell lasting \sim 90 s. Analysis of the ASM data gives intensities (2-10 keV) and hardness ratios (from 3 or 4 energy bands) of known sources and transients. The analysis also produces a history of the pointing of each of the three cameras, and information about the quality of the intensity values. Data from successive dwells and different cameras may be analyzed separately or together. The ASM Data Products serve to collect these results from the ASM analysis. Taken together, these products comprise a database from which users may either determine the behavior of a particular source by using the intensity and hardness files as is, or users may apply data selections to create custom light curves from the various analysis solutions. These Data Products, including the latest orbit by orbit results, are available electronically via the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC).
