Dear RHESSI software users,
On Friday, March 3, we put some new RHESSI data accumulation
software online in the SSW hessi atest directory. For the most
part, the changes should be transparent to almost every user. The
main changes are
- Since January 2014, electronic errors in the detectors moved
some events to energies up to 100-150 keV higher than their
actual energy. These events are now identified and removed. This
effect was getting worse with time. If you found higher energy
emission than expected, you should look again with this new
software.
- Livetime accumulations at very small time bins (<512 binary
microseconds) were not being reported correctly. Fine time
bins of that order are generally only necessary for real spatial
structure on the order of a few arcseconds. If you were imaging
sources far from the spin axis with Grid 1 this might have
affected your results.
- Accumulations across packet bunch boundaries were occasionally
problematic. (The software can't process the full data request
at once - it reads and processes groups or bunches of packets
sequentially to accomplish that.) The effect was minor - an
extremely short time interval of incorrect data at the
boundary. Packet boundaries are now handled correctly.
More detail is provided at this link https://hesperia.gsfc.nasa.gov/ssw/hessi/doc/software/changes/sw_3-mar-2017.htm
(the full software change history is here: https://hesperia.gsfc.nasa.gov/ssw/hessi/doc/software/changes/sw_changes.html)
Richard and Kim