ASCA data
To track whether or not the effect I’ve been seeing with MCG -6-30-15 is real, my advisors suggested that I delve into ASCA data. The hope was that I could use data directly from the Tartarus Database of AGN observations from ASCA. However, I’m looking at the data in different energy bands — in theory, I could use the extracted spectra from Tartarus, but it would be using the data in a different way that I’ve been using it with the XTE data.
The upshot is that yesterday and today I’ve been delving into the ASCA data iteself. I needed to reinstall HEASoft software package to deal with a bug in XSelect — a tool I need in order to extract spectra and light curves from the ASCA data. In addition, I needed to find a version of SAOimage to run on Mac 0SX (fortunately HEASARC had one I could just download in pop into the appropriate directory).
I haven’t dealt with many data sources other than those from XTE. ASCA is an imaging telescope, unlike XTE, so it’s a bit different to work with. Rather than just using the raw data files and scripts, I need to go into the extracted images and tell the scripts where in the image I want the lightcurves and spectra extracted from. Honestly, it’s a lot easier than the XTE data, at least so far, presuming that I’m doing it right.