Thesis Meeting
I met with Kim and Chris again this afternoon. We are still trying to figure out if the weirdness I saw in the data is real or just an effect of instrument gain changes. The problem is that the XTE PCA is quite susceptible to gain changes, and the background may not be modelled properly for all of my data. The question, then, is whether or not the effect that we’re seeing could arise from gain changes.
I’m going to attack the problem from two tracks in the coming weeks. First I’m going to persue the veracity of the weirdness by looking up data on this source from other X-ray missions, specifically ASCA and XMM. Second, I’m going to assume that the weirdness is real and make some plots to show if and where changes in the spectrum reflect the weirdness.