CHANDRA ELECTRONIC ANNOUNCEMENT NUMBER 91

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Contents:

1. ChaSeR Retired
2. Cancelled: X-ray View of Galaxy Ecosystems
3. The 8th IACHEC meeting

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Item 1: ChaSeR Retired
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Chaser, the stand-alone Java application that for many years has
provided search and retrieval access to the Chandra Data Archive, has
recently been retired.

The web-based version, WebChaser (http://cda.cfa.harvard.edu/chaser),
now duplicates and extends upon the capabilities of Chaser, making the
older interface tool obsolete.

Chandra Data Archive Operations

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Item 2: Cancelled: X-ray View of Galaxy Ecosystems
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As a result of the new NASA policies to reduce spending on travel and
conferences under the recent United States Government sequestration,
the planned summer 2013 Chandra-sponsored Science Workshop entitled

           The X-ray View of Galaxy Ecosystems

has been CANCELLED.

The workshop was planned for July 31 - Aug 2.  We apologize for the
inconvenience to those who have already submitted abstracts and/or
made hotel reservations.  Please make sure to cancel the latter in a
timely fashion.

The Chandra X-ray Center is operated for NASA by the Smithsonian
Astrophysical Observatory, with a prime goal of optimizing science
return from the Chandra X-ray Observatory.  These in-person science
workshops have proven to be a very effective and efficient means for
dissemination of important science results, and for nurturing new and
productive collaborations.  We regret the need for this cancellation
and look forward to future opportunities for scientific exchange.

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Item 3: Eighth Meeting of the International Astronomical 
	Consortium for High Energy Calibration (IACHEC)
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The 8th IACHEC meeting was held March 25-28 near Leicester, UK.  Over
40 X-ray and gamma-ray instrument calibration scientists represented
twelve missions (including one ground-based TeV project).  The purpose
of the annual meeting of the IACHEC members is to work out
cross-calibration issues among the various high energy instruments and
to establish astronomical calibration standards.  Among the topics
discussed were the completion of cross-calibration papers using
clusters of galaxies, blazars, the Crab Nebula, supernova remnants
dominated by thermal emission such as 1E0102-7219, and isolated
neutron stars and white dwarfs.  One session was dedicated to
cross-calibration with NuSTAR. Presentations at the meeting can be
found at 

http://web.mit.edu/iachec/meetings/2013/index.html

and IACHEC papers on cross-calibration are listed at

http://web.mit.edu/iachec/papers/index.html

There were over 50 presentations at the meeting, so we highlight only
two results from the summaries of the Galaxy Clusters (J. Nevalainen,
U. Helsinki) and Thermal SNRs (P. Plucinsky, SAO) working groups,
which provide detailed comparisons of Chandra fluxes to those of
various instruments on Swift, Suzaku, and XMM.  Cluster studies show
that the 2-7 keV fluxes derived from ACIS, Swift and XMM/MOS data
agree to within about 5%, while the XMM/pn fluxes are less by about
10%.  For 1E0102, 80% of the fluxes from the four strongest line
groups in the 0.56-1.02 keV band measured by 13 different instruments
agree within 10% of the IACHEC reference model. 

In addition, there were two guest speakers.  Claire Cramer (National
Institute of Standards and Technology) talked about tracing instrument
calibration to SI standards using laboratory techniques and 
David van Dyk (Imperial College London) talked about how to include
calibration uncertainties in data analysis.  

The 2014 meeting will be in the US, organized by David Burrows (PSU).

-- Herman Marshall and Larry David for the CXC Calibration Group 

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