Chandra Proposal Planning

These calibration files, updated to the final CY25 release on 15 DEC 2022, are intended for use during the Chandra Cycle 25 Call for Proposals.

ACIS RMFs and ARFs: RMFs and ARFs for specific positions on ACIS-I and ACIS-S. These files were generated from the most recent CALDB available at the start of the current proposal cycle.
Grating RMFs and ARFs: Grating RMFs and ARFs for the HETG/ACIS-S, LETG/ACIS-S, and LETG/HRC-S grating/detector configurations. These files were generated from the most recent CALDB available at the start of the current proposal cycle.
PIMMS Effective Areas: Technical information and plots of the effective areas used to calculate count rates in the PIMMS software.
Chandra Effective Area Viewer: View the current cycle effective areas for the PIMMS-supported configurations, including plots and specific data values versus photon energy, and compare data from different cycles.

Analysis Notes

Matching CIAO and CALDB Versions

CALDB 4.10.2 should not be used unless you are running CIAO 4.12 or later versions!

Are your versions mismatched? Time to upgrade CIAO and CALDB!

News

Previous Items

15 Dec 2022 [New]

CfP Cycle 25 Release Cycle 25 PIMMS Effective areas information, ACIS and GRATING sample (G)RMFs and (G)ARFs for proposal planning by non-CIAO users.

15 Nov 2022

CalDB 4.10.2 has been released to the public. Included in this release is the latest ACIS OBF Contamination (CONTAM) model (v N0015) upgrade, which adjusts for recent (2020-2022) increases in the contamination rate relative to the older model (v N0014). See the CalDB 4.10.2 Release Notes for details.

16 Jun 2022

CalDB 4.9.8 has been released to the public. Included in this release are PCAD ALIGN file updates (18 new files, six-month intervals, extending from 2013-2021); HRC-I/Grating angle corrections in the PIXLIB GEOM file vN0007; HRC-S QE Uniformity upgrade version N0016 with and additional new file for new observations. See the CalDB 4.9.8 Release Notes for details.

24 Mar 2022

CalDB 4.9.7 has been released to the public. Included in this release are ACIS T_GAIN upgrades for Epochs 85+86 (effective 2021-05-02, finalized) and epochs 87+88 (effecive 2021-11-01, provisional), and expanded FP_TEMP boundary conditions for certain ACIS CalDB files applicable to current and future datasets, to accommodate warmer ACIS calibration observations to be taken in the near future. See the CalDB 4.9.7 Release Notes for details.

24 Sep 2021

CalDB 4.9.6 has been released to the public. Included in this release are ACIS T_GAIN upgrades for Epochs 83+84 (effective 2020-11-01, finalized) and epochs 85+86 (effecive 2021-05-02, provisional), HRC-S T_GMAPs v4, QE v16, and QEU v15, as well as HRC-I QE v13. See the CalDB 4.9.6 Release Notes for details.

29 Apr 2021

CalDB 4.9.5 has been released to the public. Included in this release are ACIS T_GAIN upgrades for Epochs 81+82 (effective 2020-05-02, finalized) and epochs 83+84 (effecive 2020-11-01, provisional), as well as a new ACIS-S3 CTI correction file for observations taken since 2020-01-01. HRC-I/LETG +/- 1st order LSF parameter files have also been added. See the CalDB 4.9.5 Release Notes for details.

16 Dec 2020

CalDB 4.9.4 has been released to the public. Included in this release are the ACIS CONTAM N0014 upgrade, an HRC-S QEU N0014 upgrade with 29 new files for the library, and a delayed upgrade to the HRC-S PI Region background filter file N0002. See the CalDB 4.9.4 Release Notes for details.