Notes of the 14th teleconference of the IACHEC Working Group Chairs WebEX 27 February 2013 Participants: V.Burwitz (VB), C.Grant (CG), M.Guainazzi (MG), H.Marshall (HM) L.Natalucci (LN), J.Nevalainen (JN), P.Plucinsky (PP), A.Pollock (AP), S.Sembay (SS) Apologies: Y.Terada (YT) 1. Meeting logistics -------------------- SS and A.Read made recently visited the meeting venue. We will have a large meeting room, plus four smaller rooms for Working Group and splinter meetings (2x20 seats + 2x12 seats). No lunch is foreseen on the last day. Breakfast and the morning coffee break are included in the meeting fee. About 50% of the current registered participants paid in their own currency rather then in UKP. The (small) difference will be covered by the local budget. SS will send a message to the remaining ones reminding them to pay, if possible, directly in UKP. This message will include also some other last- minute logistic information. It is agreed to post the list of registered participants to the meeting web page. SS will provide MG with it. 2. WG activities and goals review --------------------------------- CCD: no much activity over the past 12 months. CG is going to send around the usual message to the WG participants to set-up the agenda. Possible topics emerged during the meeting discussion are: . "timing modes" calibration . how to cope with the fading calibration sources Background: in principle a "Background WG" was established two IACHEC meetings ago, but it never started. SS/MG will contact A.Read/S.Snowden to inquire whether they would be willing to take over. It is unanimously agreed that a working Background WG would be very important, especially (AP) to define background spectral models Galaxy clusters: it is foreseen to make progress in four areas: . extending existing studies to larger sample of weaker clusters . integrate the work done so far on 5 observatories into a grand-calibration scheme . study the possibility of using S-Z effect as a complementary calibration tool . evaluate the NuSTAR cross-calibration Effective area: . the campaign on PKS2155-304 continues. After Ishida-san withdraw from the coordination of the data analysis due to his Astro-H commitments, somebody has to take over this responsibility. Lack of proper data analysis could endanger the continuation of the campaign due to time pressure from projects. HM will follow-up with Ishida-san; a decision must be taken by the end of the 8th IACHEC . HM is preparing a summary web page on cross-calibration campaigns, as agreed at the last meeting . the paper on the blazar sample has not entered in the final wrap-up phase yet . the data of the NuSTAR cross-calibration campaign on 3C273 are being analyzed by the different calibration team. A better coordination would be advisable. HM to follow-up High-resolution: the main activity in the last year followed-up AP attending the ATOMDB Workshop. AP will present a plan of work before the meeting, including all the procedural changes discussed at this event Non-thermal SNR: some more work is required on the effective area of instruments above 10 keV before the Crab paper can be submitted. Currently, it is expected to submit it by September this year. It is unclear whether NuSTAR can join. Many projects (Chandra, INTEGRAL, XMM-Newton) are independently reducing their G21.5-0.9 data, for the sake of cross-calibration with NuSTAR. LM will organize a specific working session on this source Thermal SNR: . 1E0102-72. The comparison of the line normalization was updated and published in a 2012 SPIE paper (to be posted on the IACHEC web page). The A&A paper is almost ready. The only missing part is a section on the calibration time variability, which each instrument is writing independently. Lots of recent results arose from the work on the ACIS, EPIC-MOS, and XIS data, slowing down the paper. The WG will need to evaluate to which extend the huge amount of new information on cross-calibration time variability shall enter into the paper . N132D. A model based on a deep, chip-centred EPIC-pn exposure is available. Applying it to the ACIS data unveiled features at the iron line.This is unlikely to be related to the relative accuracy of the energy reconstruction between EPIC-MOS and EPIC-pn, which should be in principle nominal (+/-10 eV) modulo long-term CTI degradation. MG will provide appropriate references. WD and INS: a paper on the 3 White Dwarfs is in preparation. The correction function discussed in it has been in the meanwhile included in the LETG effective area. A new deep Chandra observational campaign on RXJ1856-3754 will be made between July and September, for a total of 90+60 ks. XMM-Newton may be interested to join - to be discussed at the 8th IACHEC. AP will present a study on the variability of RXJ1856-3754 in the EPIC-pn, trying to answer the question of how much it is due to the instrument and how much it is (may be) intrinsic 3. AOB ------ AP is still waiting for inputs on the round table on statistical methods. The original deadline (28/2/2013) has been shifted by 1 week. Have a nice trip to Leicestershire!