Notes of the 17th teleconference of the IACHEC Working Group Chairs WebEX 4 February 2014 Participants: D.Burrows (DB), V.Burwitz (VB), C.Grant (CG), M.Guainazzi (MG), H.Marshall (HM), E.Miller (EM), J.Nevalainen (JN), P.Plucinsky (PP), A.Pollock (AP), S.Sembay (SS) Apologies: L.Natalucci (LN), Y.Terada (YT) 1. 9th IACHEC meeting logistics ------------------------------- The registration page (meeting + accommodation) has been set-up, and the IACHEC web portal updated accordingly. An announcement was sent to the whole IACHEC mailing list. Five registration have been already received. A reminder will be sent about one week before the deadline (1 March 2014). A new text widget will be added to the registration web page, allowing prospective participants to specify multiple talks, including talks to be scheduled in WG sessions. The venue claims to be ready to support heavy Internet usage during the meeting. Following a real-time enquiry, Airlie Center states: - "Each of our wireless transmitters will allow up to 128 devices to connect to it. We usually put more than one transmitter in the Federal room for larger groups." - "We have 200 mbps commercial symmetric Internet provided by Comcast via Fiber Optic cables." These numbers seem to be sufficient for our needs. If somebody feels otherwise, s/he should rise this point as soon as possible, for possible corrective actions to be taken. 2. External speakers to the 9th IACHEC -------------------------------------- - Astrosat: unclear if somebody from UK is coming. However, A.Kembhavi (IUCAA) showed recently great interest in an Indian delegation to attend. MG will follow-up - Astro-H. MG/EM will ask for the Astro-H participation to the next IACHEC during the forthcoming SWT meeting (3rd week of February) - Athena: P.Nandra showed interest in a representative attending the meeting - DIOS: Ohashi-san (PI) was contacted. They will probably send a representative - eROSITA: VB will cover - HXMT: a delegation of 4 scientist has already requested the invitation letters - NICER: at least one representative is expected (CG to follow-up) - Fermi/LAT: no news - Goddard X-ray optics groups: WFI imaging showed interest in attending; the other group does not seem to be interested (yet) - NIST: no news - HIFLUGCS: G.Schellenberger would be interested to come. However, he does not have funding. Unfortunately, we cannot provide support - NuSTAR/Galaxy Clusters: N.J.Westergaard should come, if funds allow The AHEAD proposal includes explicitly cross-calibration aspects, along the lines discussed via e-mails among the IACHEC WG Chairs. The corresponding call will be issued soon. LN or SS will present the proposal at the 9th IACHEC. Summary: there seem to be enough participation of future mission at the 9th IACHEC, for a special "legacy" session in the program to make sense. India expressed great interest in organising a future IACHEC meeting (even the next one), and Europe is willing to give up its slot to seize this opportunity. MG to check with the HXMT colleagues if they want to pick-up the originally intended European slot. 3. WG status and goals for the next meeting ------------------------------------------- - CCD: preparation for the 9th IACHEC has not started yet. CG/MG will coordinate sending an e-mail to the whole IACHEC mailing list, announcing the intention to hold a special sub-session on background at the 9th IACHEC - Clusters: the HIFLUGCS is ready to submit a paper on the cosmological implications of cross-calibration uncertainties between Chandra and XMM-Newton. A more comprehensive IACHEC paper will follow. Simulations to characterise the stray-light in NuSTAR using Abell 1795 as a test case are ongoing. No activity on two other projects (multi-mission study of a few selected clusters, Fe diagnostics) due to lack of time - Contamination: 16 members. A first teleconference to prepare a working plan will be held shortly - Effective area: cross-calibration campaign on 3C273 and PKS2155-304 are ongoing, with full involvement of (and often led by) NuSTAR colleagues. The Chandra/XMM-Newton blazar paper is in the wrap-up phase, delayed by EPIC-pn calibration work that has kept M.Smith busy in the last couple of months. MG will try and make sure that he has enough time to prepare a first complete draft by the 9th IACHEC. An internal cross-calibration Chandra meeting focused on pending differences between grating and CCD, with no conclusive results yet: a follow-up at the next User's Group is expected - Thermal SNR: the paper on 1E0102-72 greatly benefits from recent updates in the ACIS and EPIC-MOS contamination calibration. Its narrative is more complete and convincing now. A version ready for submission should be circulated before the 9th IACHEC. This will allow the WG to resume the work on N132D. A teleconference shall be held shortly. Further useful data may come from a multi-pointing survey on M33. MG/PP will interchange information on data which have been, or could be used for vignetting calibration in XMM-Newton - WD/INS: the data of a recent deep LETG observations on RXJ1856.6-3754 are still to be analysed. The paper on the LETG effective area adjustment based on three WD spectra is ongoing - both activities inevitably delayed by eROSITA calibration - NT-SNR: a paper on the G21.5-0.9 NuSTAR spectra will be published. It reports the discovery of a previously unknown spectral break (similar breaks seen also in the NuSTAR spectra of blazars). An update of the Tsujimoto et al. paper seems to be warranted. The Crab paper is still ongoing - High-resolution: AP intends to conclude this work, although he has left the XMM-Newton project, and IACHEC is no longer on the list of his official tasks. A transition to a new WG coordinator(s) shall be ensured at the 9th IACHEC 4. Next meeting --------------- After the Chandra deadline (14 March 2014), to finalize the scientific program of the 9th IACHEC meeting.