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Timing Error Fixed in January 2006 data

January 16, 2009

Users of RXTE data should be aware of a one second timing error that was recently fixed in archival data from 01-12 January 2006, inclusive. Observations from that time range had an incorrect value for the TIMEZERO keyword (incorrect value 2.37842941), which has now been corrected to TIMEZERO=3.37842941. RXTE users following standard timing recipes with the old data would have experienced a one second time offset error. There are a number of pulsar observations in this time range which would be most vulnerable to such an error. All RXTE users are advised to re-download the data from this time range from the archive. When using the corrected files, the offset error should be resolved. The problem was due to leap second transition issues in 2006, which were anticipated during the more recent transition in 2008-2009.


RXTE Cycle 13 Announced

September 19, 2008

NASA has approved extending RXTE operations beyond the nominal end of Cycle 12 (December 2008) through September 2009. For more information, see the RXTE Cycle 13 Information Page.


RXTE SOF Realtime Data Area Has Moved

August 14, 2008

The RXTE SOF's Realtime and Pseudo-production data retrieval site has moved. If you are looking for the SOF's Realtime or Pseudo-production data areas, the new, permanent sites are:

Please remove old bookmarks for these areas and replace them with the new sites! Thanks for your patience with this transition. The new site is expected to be faster and more robust.


New RXTE Mission-Long Data Products

May 12, 2008

The RXTE Guest Observer Facility (GOF) has begun generating Mission-Long Data Products based on the standard data products (StdProds) from the PCA and HEXTE, for over 200 sources that have been observed many times with RXTE during its mission. These products combine all "good" RXTE observations for a given source, over the lifetime of the RXTE mission.

The mission-long data products are intended to give a researcher an idea of how much, and what quality of, data are available in the RXTE public archive for their sources of interest. They are not meant to replace the careful reduction and analysis by individual scientists, but rather to lead them towards data that will be suitable to their needs. Users should bear in mind that only a single point is included for an observation. And thus the impressive variability seen by many RXTE targets on short timescales is entirely overlooked in the mission-long data products.

For more information, see our Mission-Long Data Products Guide.



Previous RXTE News Items

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2004:

2003:

2002:


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This page is maintained by the RXTE GOF and was last modified on Friday, 16-Jan-2009 17:09:02 EST.

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