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TABLE DESCRIPTION:
A) The most recent is listed first in the table (reverse time order).
B) The 4 left-most columns (group heading: "Triggers") are:
the Trigger_Number, the Date (yy/mm/dd), the Trigger_Time (hh:mm:ss.ss), and
the Source of the BAT Trigger (eg GRB, known source, noise, CRS, ST LoL, etc).
C) The next 4 columns (group heading: "Light Curves and Spectra") are
the 3 instrument-based lightcurves and sometimes spectra.
For "BAT", there are 4 subcolumns: the real-time TDRSS Lightcurve ("TLC"),
the output of the BA_script (lightcurves & spectra) ("BA"),
a text-file version of the 64-msec binned mask-weighted lightcurve (see details below) ("TXT"), and
GIF version of that lightcurve ("GIF").
For "XRT", there are 3+2 subcolumns: the text file of the x-ray afterglow lightcurve ("TXT"),
a postscript version of the plot of those afterglow lightcurve points ("PS"),
a link to the U.Leicester main webpage on that trigger (plots, images, hardness ratios, etc) ("MainPage"),
a postscript version of the plot of specrtum ("PS"), and
a tarfile of all the data ("Tarfile").
For UVOT, tbd.
D) The content of the links therein can/will be periodically updated
for a short time after each trigger:
For BAT, the updating will occur for up to 8 telemetry downlinks after the trigger (~1-20 hrs).
For XRT, the updating will occur for as many days as the GRB continues to be follow-up observed.
U. of Leicester will not post anything to the page if it is not a GRB.
For UVOT, tbd.
E) The Source column is filled in by a human 1-4 days after the trigger_time.
The choices are: GRB YYMMDD[a], SGR HHMM+DD, XYZ J123+456,
Transient (a previously unknown hard x-ray trans), ST LoL (Star Tracker Loss-of-Lock),
CRS (Cosmic Ray Shower), Noise, Chance Coincidence noise with a known source, and other misc things.
F) For triggers that are non-astrophysical (noise, CRS, ST LoL, etc), the link entries in that row
will likely point to nothing (in the case of BAT) or to "Invalid Trigger ID" or "Non burst" pages
(in the case of XRT).
G) The content and format of the "txt" versions of the files are listed at the bottom of this web page,
and inside the "txt" files themselves. The "GIF" and "PS" links are just pre-plotted versions
of the "txt" files for your viewing convenience. The XRT "MainPage" lists more information for that trigger.
H) Please note that for BAT, the links are hosted on the local GCN web machine. But for XRT,
the links are hosted at the U. of Leicester. For UVOT, tbd.
CITATIONS:
These are the official data products of the respective BAT, XRT, and UVOT instrument teams.
Please cite the Evans et al., (A&A, 469, 379E, 2007) paper if you use the XRT data in a publication.
Please acknowledge Taka Sakamoto and Scott D. Barthelmy if you use BAT data in a publication.
For UVOT, tbd.
FURTHER INFO:
For more information on the 3 Swift instruments:
Swift.
For more information on the XRT columns, see University of Leicester.
Mail questions/suggestions/complaints to
Scott Barthelmy.
BAT:
The files are in ASCII test.
The first line in the file is:
TRIGGER= TTTTTT DATE_TIME= yy/mm/dd:hh:mm:ss.ss NAME= GRBYYMMDD[a]
There are N lines of actual mask-weighted lightcurve data. Each line contains 11 columns:
Time C1 E1 C2 E2 C3 E3 C4 E4 CT ET
The columns are:
Time of center of bin (64msec bin width),
Count_rate_E1
Error_E1
Count_rate_E2
Error_E2
Count_rate_E3
Error_E3
Count_rate_E4
Error_E4
Count_rate_E1_4
Error_E1_4
All the Count_rates and Errors are in units of counts/cm2/sec corrected to be "on-axis" rates.
Please note that this correction for off-axis theta value is purely a geometric correction,
and does NOT incorporate an energy-dependent correction for the increased low-energy absorption
that occurs for off-axis events.
The time binning is kept reasonably small (64 msec) so as to cover the relatively large dynamic range
in the time scales of bursts. The user can rebin the data to larger bin for those bursts
that exhibit longer timescales and lower counting statistics.
XRT:
The "Basic lightcurve" ASCII file is a single file containing just
the time, count rate and error columns. This is ready for use in QDP,
thus begins with READ SERR/TERR lines (to tell qdp which columns contain errors).
There are 5 columns in this file, which are:
* Time
* Time -- positive error
* Time -- negative error
* Source count rate
* Error in count rate
There are up to four datasets in the file, separated by a line of NO NO NO NO NO,
(again, for compatibility with QDP). The datasets appear in the following order:
Windowed Timing (WT) data; WT upper limit; Photon Counting (PC) data; PC upper limit.
Depending on the object, some of these may be missing, however each dataset begins
with a comment (denoted by a leading !) identifying it.
UVOT:
TBD
This file was last modified by a human on 06-Mar-09.